


Warm & Soft

by cgee



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: 9 possible endings, Canon compliant ~language~ (aka the f-bomb), Choose Your Own Adventure, Mileven, Multi, Posting 21 chapters at once? In this economy??, Soulmate AU, Suggestive themes in chapter 21 (not smut), both canon compliant and divergent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 12:54:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 71,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cgee/pseuds/cgee
Summary: Eleven—also known as kid, El Hopper, Jane Ives, and Eleanor from Sweden—spent her early life with very few choices at all and now she’s wondering if there’s such a thing as too many. And yet, somehow, she inevitably ends up next to a a freckle-faced, too-good-for-his-own-good boy every single time.A Mileven choose your own adventure story.





	1. INTRO

 

Hello! I’m trying something entirely new. Not only is this my first ever ST fic, it’s my first attempt at anything vaguely CYOA-related, and good god, it was hard. So if you’re overwhelmed by the sheer volume of chapters being posted in one sitting (join the club), that’s why, because I kind of can’t just post them whenever.

This story follows the journey of our favorite psionic superstar of many names, El Hopper, as she navigates the world with you as co-pilot and learn that, somehow, all roads seem to lead to Mike Wheeler.

There are 9 possible endings, all stemming from chapter 1 and fanning out in various directions to make your wildest AU dreams (or nightmares???) come true.

As you’ll learn, parts of it are complete AUs while others are more canon compliant, but I’ve definitely taken some (or maybe a lot of) creative liberties. And never fear, it’s ultimately a soulmate AU! So don’t be afraid to make difficult choices ;)

 Since AO3 is, sadly, not the most intuitive for this, chapter options are now linked at the bottom. 

Reviews are wholly appreciated. Cheers!


	2. I Ran

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it begins...

_Running, running, running_. That’s all she can wrap her brain around. That, and putting more and more distance between herself and the near-deafening alarms and inevitable wannabe captors behind her. If she took a moment to think, she’d note how cold the ground is under her feet, how the feeling of the rain (pouring more sideways than vertically) is _almost_ refreshing, something unlike anything she’s ever experienced before. The canopy of trees does little to stop the deluge, actually only making it fall in fatter drops from certain leaves, clouding her vision. If she took a moment to think, she’d realize just how utterly _overwhelming_ it is to breathe the forest air, come face-to-face with some things she has only seen in picture books, feel rain on her skin, and hear (oh god, all the _sounds_ ) everything from the smattering of rain among nature to her own harsh breathing ( _that_ she was familiar with, though).

 After minutes or hours or days, she stops at a tree, hissing at the feel of a rogue acorn pressing into her sensitive sole (not weathered by days spent practicing barefoot double-dutch rounds on a gravelly driveway or sprinting into the quarry over a multitude of rocks masquerading as beach sand like other kids) before her breath hitches. She hears voices—no, nothing like _Papa_. In fact, they sound like people she’s never even really heard before, at least not significantly enough to remember them. Not harsh or adult or curt. On one hand, she’s curious. But on the other, y’know, _survival_. Before she truly has a chance to process what’s happening (isn’t that always the case?) she sees a light, almost like a pinprick growing slightly bigger in the distance. Then two more. She realizes with an ever-increasing heart rate (did it ever slow down in the first place?) that she needs to act.

 

**IF SHE TURNS TOWARD THE LIGHT, GO TO THE NEXT CHAPTER**

**IF SHE TURNS AWAY AND RUNS, GO[HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787788/chapters/41968154#workskin)**


	3. Beat It

She hears talk of weapons, rapidly wondering if—for the millionth time that night—she’s perhaps made the wrong choice. Up until then her life has been devoid of many choices, it wouldn’t be unlikely that she’d pick the incorrect one once, twice, maybe three times (or more). But then there they are, the voices in question. Their size and stature—closer to _hers_ than that of Papa’s, not to mention his looming presence that added an extra 20 feet, easy—do little to comfort her aggressively beating heart. She blinks in rapid succession as a light is shining directly in her face in a way that she knows will have her seeing spots for a while, not unlike nights in the lab when she couldn’t sleep and opted to stare into the fluorescent bulb on her ceiling in hopes that it would somehow become sentient enough to acknowledge her plight and read a bedtime story.

But once the flashlights are lowered (there are more, now, one in each eye and another hitting her chin for good measure) she’s face to face with a boy and she can do little more than stare.

The silence goes on like that for a few seconds, and if the boys are uncomfortable, she has no awareness of it (awkward silences mean nothing when your life is full of silence). The two boys on either side of him are visibly squirming, though, and she can’t tell if it’s because they’re distraught or want to ask questions or just need to use the bathroom.

“A-are you okay?!” The dark-haired boy she’d previously been having a staring contest with (she was winning) finally blurts.

If she knew what a dam was, surely she’d note that this was the remark that broke it. Their rapid-fire, overlapping questioning rivals the rain in its sheer relentlessness, and while she kind of wants to answer, all she can really focus on is how long she’s been standing there in a drenched hospital gown as rain continues to drip down her nose (she’d tried to follow its path with her eyes earlier, but it just made her head hurt and vision go blurry).

“Shut _up_ ,” the middle boy reacts again with seeming authority (and a crack in his voice on the second syllable). But it’s still nothing like when Papa yells, never that.

The other two stop mid-sentence, as though waiting for something.

“Well, _Paladin,_ what are we waiting for. Let’s go!” The dark-skinned boy remarks, turning back to his bike.

The other boy—in a hat that seems to play a balancing act on his hair—seems to agree, turning towards his with no words.

“Seriously? We can’t just leave her here!” The seeming leader of their pack looks up at the sky, exasperated as though they do this all the time.

“Mike,” the curly-haired one speaks for the first time in a while. “Come on, man.”

His tone is gentler than the other boy’s, but it does little to quell the ache that she really may have to stay here all night. While she doesn’t know what to think about this particular crew, she knows it’s the best option she has, and, well, something about them feels _warm_ . She doesn’t know what to make of that as it’s never something she’s felt before, but she tries to push away the thought that it could mean something _bad_. She knows bad. She has scars from bad, and things that keep her up late at night thanks to bad. She knows.

Mike—she knows his name now, and it sounds a hell of a lot nicer than Papa—seems to ignore his friends, taking a tentative step towards her instead. In one swift movement he’s removing an arm from his coat, swinging the rest around in a haphazard fashion that has her recoiling a bit. He holds it out to her, nodding at it after 30 seconds and no reaction, before she finally reaches a tentative hand toward it as if waiting for it to be snatched away at the last second. But he doesn’t do that, and next thing she knows her hand is grasping the collar ( _victory!_ ) before sliding her own arms into it. She was right— _warm_.

“You’re serious- you’re seriously doing this right now?” Mike’s friend from earlier speaks, now with both legs straddling his bike, and it’s at this point that she realizes she has no idea what he’s sitting on.

“Yes, Lucas. _We_ ’re doing this right now,” Mike huffs, gesturing toward her to follow him.

She doesn’t react for a moment—still entranced by the metal contraptions that both other boys are now sitting on—then feels a loose hand on her wrist. She’s been touched ( _grabbed_ ) there before, but through the thick layer of fabric it feels nothing like it ever did.

“We’re gonna go to my house. Then we’ll get you some help,” Mike’s speaking exclusively to her now and she can do little more than nod.

“It’s your funeral,” she hears the boy (Lucas, now she knows his name, too) mutter in a way that she thinks maybe wasn’t actually just specifically for Mike to hear, or at least not respond to.

After a few seconds of adjusting and one yelp from Mike (and for reasons unbeknownst to her the back of his neck in particular feels very warm as she gently leans against it), they start moving, a bit wobbly at first, then more swiftly, and the raindrops feel entirely differently than they had before. It’s like they’re weaving through them rather than at their mercy. For the first time in what feels like centuries, she finally takes a breath.

 

**GO TO THE NEXT CHAPTER**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew. If a ref were present I’d definitely get a flag for excessive use of em dashes, parenthesis, and italics (and it's only gonna get worse from here, folks), but, like our son says, “this isn’t some stupid sports game.”


	4. Take On Me

The ride to wherever they’re going is far too short for her liking, and soon they’re dismounting their bikes (she heard the boy, Dustin, whose name she finally learned when Lucas yelled something about his mom at him—what did his mama ever do to Lucas, she wonders—mention the word offhandedly). She follows a bit behind the boys, but still makes sure to stay close, the sound of sirens and heavy, adult-sized footfalls not a distant enough memory to put her at ease.

Once she’s inside—miraculously inside a place that’s _warm_ and has _color_ and a pronounced lack of metal tables and it’s so overwhelming she doesn’t know what to do—she sits. There’s only time for one thought to flitter through her mind ( _soft_ ) before she’s being peppered with questions again, and words she doesn’t understand, and the confusion is almost as overwhelming as the niceness. Almost.

She watches them more than listens to what they’re saying. The talking at the lab had always been slow, methodical. This reminds her more of the incessant chirping of birds Papa once brought in to have another subject work with years ago (they gave her a headache, but she liked them, but then she never saw—or heard—them again). It isn’t until Lucas reaches for her that the chatter ends, punctuated with the smack of Mike’s hand. She didn’t necessarily want him to touch her (yes, it was blood), but violence—even from someone who is otherwise _warm—_ makes her squirm. Nonetheless, she’s grateful for the change of pace.

“Hey wait, is that a _hospital gown_?” Dustin’s eyebrow raises, nearly obscured beneath his hat, before his face settles into a peculiar expression with wide eyes that would probably make her laugh if she knew anything about what was going on. “Oh my god- do you think her, like, butt is out?”

“You’re an idiot, Dustin,” Lucas huffs, rolling his eyes, and Mike hears enough of the remark to jab Dustin in the ribs with a weak fist, but this time the boys end up reacting in a weird way, almost laughing.

She’d certainly never laughed when Papa or his friends had touched her in that way, but maybe things are just different _out here_.

After she changes ( _privacy_ ), finally finds her voice (she’s surprised at how it sounds), and finally gets a _name_ (El), she can’t think much beyond how _soft_ she feels. And _warm_. Right now she doesn’t know if it’s the clothes, or the place, or the people. But she hopes she gets to find out.

Once the thunder has faded from something scary to something almost melodic (somehow) sleep comes the easiest it has, well...ever.

In the morning she’s awoken by a peculiar thing and it takes her far too long to realize it’s the sun. But there’s a clear lack of a rough hand yanking on her arm or hand or wrist or even picking her up while she still has one foot in a REM cycle that tips her off. The _sun_. Huh.

She takes a few minutes to just _feel_ , running her hands over the sheets and pillows and blankets cocooning her before something else catches her attention. Well, _commands_ it rather than catches—there’s a screech coming from the couch she remembers sitting on, and it’s as frightening as it is irritating, clearly begging for her to acknowledge it. She grabs the offending object, nearly taking an eye out with the retractable antenna before looking at it with narrowed eyes. Her brain feels both fuzzy and clear at the same time, like she’s supposed to be finding something, but she doesn’t know what. Then she hears it—a sound, not a word, just a sound. It sounds just like Mike and his friends, but sadder, scared. She wonders how she can know all that just from a few seconds via static until she realizes it doesn’t sound so dissimilar to the noises that would spill out of her own mouth after a particularly long day at the lab with nothing but her thoughts and memories ( _gray_ , all gray) to keep her company.

Those noises fade as quickly as they come, static somehow drowning out the sound of feet bounding down the basement steps (despite his slight stature, graceful on his feet Mike is not, if the way they nearly tumbled off his bike the previous night is any indication). Then he’s talking to her about the device ( _supercom_ ) and offering her food—and though it looks not unlike the toys she used to play with before the lab decided she was too old (at age 5), she’s apparently trusted Mike up until this point and, to be fair, she’s ravenous—and it’s hard to slow down her brain to take in his words when all she can focus on is the _absolute heaven_ that she’s eating right now.

But she does, and she listens. And with a gulp that suddenly feels like she’s swallowing that acorn she stepped on rather than the greatest piece of food known to mankind, she realizes. She needs to make a decision. Again.

 

 **IF SHE SAYS NO TO MIKE’S PLAN AND TELLS HIM ABOUT THE BAD MEN, SKIP[HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787788/chapters/41968337#workskin)** 

**IF SHE SAYS OKAY AND AGREES TO THE PLAN, SKIP TO[HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787788/chapters/41968247#workskin)**


	5. Blue Monday

She makes a sharp turn in the other direction, her paranoia building every second. The lights seem to be getting closer anyway, she can feel their heat on her back. What at first sounded like young, innocent voices gives way to gruff, angry sounds. Are they carrying flashlights or pitchforks?

She doesn’t have time to dwell on it much longer before her world is being turned upside down. She catches her foot on a root, falling roughly to the forest floor with a yelp, feeling as though everything is closing in around her.

El Hopper awakens with a gasp, clutching her bedsheets with white knuckles and desperately seeking anything in the room to ground her. She remembers with both despair and relief that there’s a reason her walls—which she never bothered to paint beyond their original eggshell—are bare. It’s moving day.

Just when her breathing has returned to normal, a harsh knock on her door spikes her heart rate again.

“ _Jesus_ ,” El hisses. “What?!”

“You up?” The voice answers.

“No,” she teases, though she’s silently grateful that she is thanks to _that dream_ she’d been having.

“Get a move on, Hopper,” her father simply quips. “I want the truck packed in 30.”

“Whatever you say, _Hopper_ ,” she fires back, then grumbles and all but crawls out of bed to pack the rest of her things.

Twenty minutes pass before her dad comes back in to help her load the final boxes into the bed of his truck.

“Sheesh, kid, you wet the bed or something?” He teases as he handles her damp comforter, opting to bunch it into the nearest box rather than folding it with any type of rhyme or reason.

“It’s called sweat, ever heard of it?” She raises an eyebrow at him, leaning against the doorframe with arms crossed.

“Hm, ‘fraid not,” he says, still hard at work trying to stuff the cardboard box closed.

“There’s a hamper of your dirty t-shirts about to be transported to Hawkins that says otherwise.”

He laughs. “Smartass.”

El laughs and lets him continue to struggle for a minute before heaving an exasperated sigh and jumping in, authoritatively grabbing the packing tape from his hand and helping him finish all the boxes.

“But seriously. You good?”

Sometimes it amazes her just how quickly they can transition from playful ribbing to genuine care and concern. Like a switch. But that’s just them, she supposes.

“Fine,” she shrugs. “Bad dream.”

“Oh now I’ve heard of _those_ ,” he jokes, but is back to serious just as quickly. “Wanna talk about it?”

“No, no, it’s fine. It was just... _very_ bizarre.”

“See—I tell you not to watch soap operas before bed. This is what you get for not heeding my warnings.”

El’s only response is to roll her eyes, nudging him with the box she’s carrying (and if it happens to be the one packed with _heavy_ books, then so be it).

Soon enough, they’re waving goodbye to their old house—not that it ever felt like _home_ anyway—and en route to good ‘ol Hawkins, Indiana. El would be lying if she wasn’t nervous, self-consciousness was in her nature even if people did often tend to flock to her. Sure, this was Hop’s old stomping ground, but he’s her _dad_ and she’s not sure if Friday nights at the local bingo hall (or whatever _dad-age_ adults do) are her scene.

After what feels like no time at all and too much time ( _so...many...of the same songs_ , even when interspersing Hop’s cassettes with whatever the radio was playing at the time), they’re in Hawkins, parked outside an unassuming house with holes in the lawn from where the “for sale” then “SOLD” signs were recently removed. They stand on the sidewalk for a minute, appraising the place with soft smiles and getting lost in their own heads. El figures Hop’s are probably swirling around that old high school flame she’s vaguely heard about when he gets a bit loose-lipped after 3 beers and resists the urge to roll her eyes. Her dad reaches for her, snaking an arm around her shoulders and hugging her to his side.

Sure, it feels a bit cliche, but El _has_ always wanted to be in a movie. Plus it is sort of a big deal, she guesses. El had friends at her old school, but not _friends_ friends. And if her dad was able to make do here, maybe she can, too.

With a wave of optimism, she snakes out of her dad’s hold, yanks the keys from his hand and runs ahead as he follows, in no rush, grumbling good-naturedly as he always does. Her footsteps echo throughout the completely empty space, making her way from room to room and already trying to imagine the different memories that will be made there and—more importantly, if you ask her—how it will be decorated. She has enough ideas that already make Hop’s head spin. And if one of those includes an eventual photo of her and whoever she eventually goes to prom with hanging above the fireplace that makes her feel inexplicably _warm_ , well, Hop doesn’t have to hear that idea just yet.

A few days pass—blissful, glorious days of painting, unpacking, decorating, and pure and utter _avoidance—_ before Hopper breaches the subject again. The one El’s been absolutely _dreading_.

They’re sitting at their brand new wooden kitchen table sharing toast (because grocery shopping was on the list for _today_ , not a day sooner, and he only allows certain types of leftover takeout for breakfast and Chinese is unfortunately not one of them) and El can tell he’s about to bring it up because he just has that _look_ , a very dad look, and she desperately has to resist the nervous urge to sink her fingernails into the table and just _scratch_.

“So, El. School…” Hopper starts, not so much as leaving the ball in her court as reminding her that the ball is still in her court and _has been_ for over a month now.

Whatever, basketball is stupid.

She leans her forehead onto the table and groans just for good measure, giving it a few solid seconds before cracking an eye open to see that her dad is, indeed, still sitting there sporting a thoroughly unimpressed look at her antics.

“Gotta decide sometime, Ellie. It’s already late enrollment. You’re lucky your transcripts are disgustingly good.”

“Hey! Don’t call me disgusting,” she pouts, taking any bait to change the subject.

He, naturally and annoyingly, doesn’t fall for it, punctuating his eye roll with a sip of coffee.

“Funny, I don’t remember changing your name to _transcripts_. Look, I get that it’s a big decision. You’ll be there for two whole school years, best years of your life, yada yada. Just- decide by the end of the day, _please_.”

El sighs, thinking she notices two new gray hairs that have suddenly popped up over this conversation _alone_ and slaps her palms down on the table definitively.

“No, it’s okay. I got it.”

 

**IF SHE CHOOSES PUBLIC SCHOOL, GO[HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787788/chapters/41968541)**

**IF SHE CHOOSES PRIVATE SCHOOL (does Hawkins even have one??? Lol guess they do now…#AUnorules), GO[HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787788/chapters/41968556#workskin)**


	6. Don't Stop Believin'

He tells her the plan—three times for good measure—and his knee is shaking in a way that’s rustling the couch they’ve now navigated to and she puts a tentative hand on his knee to stop it. And she’d be lying if it wasn’t to stop him from running through the plan for a _fourth_ time. It works, she figures, when his words catch in his throat and a strangled noise comes out instead.

Mike guides her to the door then pauses for a moment, looking conflicted. El just stares, wondering so deeply what’s bouncing around inside his head. With a sudden tightness in her chest, she realizes that she’ll most likely never find out. Ever.

After a heavy, put-upon sigh not unlike the one he expelled when his mom called him up to go to school nearly five minutes ago, he finally grabs both of El’s hands in his, holding them loosely (but not loose enough for her to ignore how... _slimy_ they feel? No, slimy isn’t the right word. It’s a word she doesn’t have yet, she knows that).

“Uh,” Mike starts, all his authoritative confidence seemingly gone (but El doesn’t really mind him like this, _soft_ echos in her mind again). “Um, good luck, El.”

She feels a burning in the back of her eyeballs and all she can do is nod before dropping his hands and sliding out the basement door. He’s still glancing at her through the window so she nods once more, even though she’s not sure why.

And then she’s off. She counts her steps from the basement to the front door just as a distraction and is suddenly thankful that Papa did make her learn numbers, a brightly-colored abacus suddenly taking center stage in her memories.

She knocks, featherlight at first, hoping that it’s enough to grab the Wheeler matriarch’s attention. She knows it’s not. Taking another breath, she knocks again, harder this time. And again. She squeezes her eyes tight as she hears footsteps nearing the door then pops them open in time with it creaking slightly.

“Hell- oh! Hello,” Mrs. Wheeler looks down at her in confusion, but a kind smile is already making its way onto her face easily enough that anyone could tell she practices it a _lot_.

There’s a moment of silence, the two appraising each other, obviously for completely different reasons. _Mama_ , she thinks in wonder. No, not hers, she knows. But still, someone’s. _Mike’s_ . She looks strong and smart and clean and _soft_. Like someone she’d probably like to accept a warm touch from even if her perfume is a little too strong.

Mrs. Wheeler speaks again. “Are you alright?”

“I- I don’t-” El stops and starts and stops again. Suddenly she wishes she’d let Mike repeat the plan the fourth time.

But regardless, she notices that it’s working. With Mrs. Wheeler sufficiently distracted, she sees Mike in the background, he offers her a gesture with his thumb. It’s quite strange, but she figures it’s meant to be nice based on the look on his face. While it still makes her feel better than all of the times Papa was proud of her, she also feels a bit sick.

_Papa._

Karen has started to turn away at this point, fretting over having El come inside and telling Mike he still needs to _go to school already_ as she already has one hand on the receiver on the phone. But El hears none of this. Not really, anyway. All she can hear is a loud, siren’s wail ringing in her ears and all she can see are white walls, white floors and _gray, gray, gray_.

With nothing else to do, she bolts.

There she goes again, running, running, running. She tells herself whatever she has to to convince herself this is all worth it. Thinks of the pricks of needles, reproach of a white-haired man she knew for as long as she could remember, cries at being separated from her sister, rough hands pushing and tugging, monsters (so many monsters), the sheer and utter darkness of the world she was forced to visit that she just knew wasn’t, _couldn’t be_ what it was really like outside.

She doesn’t know how long she’s there. All she knows is she’s still shivering and hungry and maybe now the soles of her feet aren’t so sensitive anymore.

But after a while she’s able to learn, realize. Four days pass. And while four days breathing fresh air and seeing blue sky and feeling green grass and smelling actual smells are infinitely better than four days spent in the cold sterilization of the lab, her feet still hurt (there are some scabs there, now) and she’s learned that acorns taste bad and hurt her teeth, and she doesn’t think it’s just because she’s gotten so used to eating mush (or worse, having to face the feeding tube when she was particularly _rebellious_ ).

Not for the first time in the woods, she hears sounds in the distance. But this time, there’s more than one source. And they’re in opposite directions. _Shit_.

On one end, it sounds angry, mean. Again, nothing like Papa, no. But she can tell the words being said aren’t nice. On the other, footsteps. And rustling through the trees.

For a moment, she wants to sigh in relief and just. stop. running. But she’s not naive enough to assume it will be something good at the other end of either of the sounds. So she shuts her eyes tightly then simply reacts.

**IF SHE TURNS TOWARDS THE ANGRY VOICES, GO[HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787788/chapters/41968427#workskin)**

**IF SHE TURNS TOWARDS THE FOOTSTEPS, GO[HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787788/chapters/41968475#workskin)**


	7. Wanna Be Startin' Something

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, Part of this is canon divergent for no real reason other than wanting to be a contrarian.

She can’t. She just... _can’t_ go back there. And she can’t help the relief and vague _warmth_ that washes over her at the fact that he understands, at least a little bit. But it’s not much, because, well, _memories._ When that’s all you really have in your brain, it’s hard to push them out. Though she’s already starting to make new ones, softer ones—the feel of the blanket fort surrounding her, sound of _outside_ and animals that aren’t trapped in cages headed to their demise, the downright luxury of Mike’s clothes against her skin—most still bear dark corners and sharpness and never stay down for too long.

She’s not sure how long she’s down there by herself, dwelling in _those_ thoughts again, before the basement door swings open and half of her perks up in blind hope while the other half is prepared to kill. But it’s just Mike again, and she finally feels safe enough to leave the fort and follow him upstairs where he’s beckoning her. She’s always been good at following, even when she _really_ didn’t want to (but this time she actually does).

The natural light streaming in—the _sun_ , she reminds herself—is almost too much to take, but she adjusts quickly enough and is almost tempted to just lie on the floor where the sun hits, happily writhing like a cat. She doesn’t, though. There’s far too much to see, to _feel_ . She runs a lazy finger and a scrutinizing eye over everything, committing it to memory. There’s the TV, which Mike explains, but she doesn’t necessarily care (and doesn’t understand just how much she’ll grow to _love_ the device later on) and would rather just hear his voice without listening to his words. Something much more important catches her eye—pictures. One in particular. _Soft_. Pretty. She knows little about the world, but suddenly decides that Nancy is probably all she wants to be and is almost envious that little Holly is likely already on that path.

He asks about her parents and she doesn’t answer. Not because it hurts (it will, someday), but because there’s just nothing there at all. She doesn’t know, doesn’t feel.

Then he shows her the...La-Z-Boy? And it’s fun, and she’s breathless, and the most peculiar sound comes out of her mouth, but she feels like she’s full of bubbles, like that time one of the nicer bad men offered her a sip of soda (she never saw him again). She realizes that Lucas, Dustin, and Mike made similar noises a few times last night. It must mean something good.

The day goes on like this, learning, exploring. Mostly Mike talking (he does that a lot, sometimes stopping to see if she’s listening or understands, but mainly just... _going_ ) and El listening, or not listening, but definitely looking. Taking little pictures with her head, partially because she’s overwhelmed and partially because she hopes that if she finds enough new she can push out the old.

It’s not until they reach his room that she realizes it may not work like that. Even in the new there are still memories of the old— _Will_. She saw him there, she’d remember that face anywhere, such a stark contrast to white hair and angry grasps and furrowed brows. And just as soon as the old has been ushered back in, replacing Rory and skim milk and La-Z-Boys and soft, long hair, she’s forced to sit with it in a small, dark room, and suddenly it’s like the old hasn’t left (not even a little bit). But she does learn something important from all this. _Promise._

But it isn’t until Mike comes back ( _wow_ ) that she understands what the word means, and it’s right up there with _soft_ and _warm_ and she thinks that it’s sort of both those things at once, but also a bigger, giant thing.

Then the boys are back and it’s loud again and they seem mad, not Papa mad or bad men mad, but certainly not happy. She knows it’s about Will and she knows where he is, but she won’t, _can’t_ go back there. She doesn’t want to use her powers, doesn’t want to do something that makes the gap between her and these boys who’ve made her feel warm for the first time seem miles bigger than it already is, but she has to. And, well, that’s that, then.

But soon enough, she learns _friend_ and it feels as warm as promise and she thinks she’s finally (thank _god_ ) starting to understand, even if she doesn’t have any trading cards or comic books.

She quickly realizes her life now feels split into two halves, before and after. Yes, before lab and after lab. But also before and after _promise_ and before and after _friend_.

There’s 3-1-5 and a new, but not angry, weight on her wrist. More TV (but that quickly reminds her too much of _before_ , too) and La-Z-Boy and mouthbreathers and _understanding_ , and she heaves the biggest sigh of relief of her life at the fact that she can finally, _finally_ say that.

There’s the pink dress and yellow hair, both so soft (though the hair is a little stiff, she thinks, and she swears Nancy’s must be softer) and _pretty_. And Mike’s breath so close on her face. And she feel so serenely _warm_ that Dustin actually lays a hand across her forehead afterward and asks if she knows what a “fever” is (she’s heard it, in the lab, but doesn’t actually know—she’s beginning to hate that feeling).

There are some moments that feel bigger than others and part of her loathes the feeling of some of them blending together in the background because she wants to remember them _all_ . Even the darkest times—hurting Lucas, Mike yelling at her, another night spent in the woods—feel so much brighter and warmer than anything ever before. Because now there’s color and sound and emotion and not just _blank, blank, blankness_.

She goes back to Mike’s house two days after he and Lucas yell and there’s little more to do than wait. She doesn’t pick the basement lock—she _won’t_ , she’s trying to be _good_ —so she just stands there in hopes that he comes down and sees her, and thankfully his watch on her wrist only goes from 3 to 4 before he’s back and letting her in. Neither says anything, she just crawls in the fort while Mike looks like there are words waiting on his tongue. She doesn’t like not talking to him, she realizes, but at least she feels safe and warm and knows that _he’s_ safe, that she could snap someone’s (human or supernatural) neck if they tried to hurt him.

She can’t forget what Lucas said, though. She _is_ the monster. And as if lying to them wasn’t enough, she proved it—she _hurt_ him. (And she stole those Eggos, but she still maintains that the man _was_ being a mouthbreather.) And even though he was mad, so mad, it didn’t even matter because he was right. The only one that was right about her, she thinks, not understanding why Mike is still so willing to let her stay in his basement with all that she’s done (not to mention the parts he doesn’t even know about, like her opening the gate in the first place). She knows little about this world—she’s only been in it for a few days, after all—but she already knows he’s probably far too good for it.

She’s considering just bolting again—for the good of everyone, really—when Mike finally speaks. Well, tries to. He opens and closes his mouth a few times before any words come out.

He sighs. “Come on.”

She’s fairly content to follow him anywhere and doesn’t want to do anything else that could possibly make him realize just how terrible, how _dangerous_ she really is (how he doesn’t already know that blows her mind), so the choice is an easy one.

He places the wet cloth against her face with care, though she startles at the cool sensation regardless. It’s okay, though, and she eventually feels herself relishing the calming, rhythmic feeling on her cheek. It feels nice to be taken care of by someone who won’t immediately turn around and ask for something in return, even if she doesn’t think she deserves it.

“That’s better,” he says once he’s done wiping off the last bit of evidence of her days and nights back in the woods.

She takes a look for herself and, though she can admit she looks better not covered in dirt, blood, and who knows what else, the loss of the wig still feels very pronounced, like it’s meant to be on her head and now a part of her is missing without it (a part that, before she put it on, she didn’t even know existed). As if sensing her thoughts—she’s quiet, but not always great at hiding them—Mike speaks again.

“You don’t need it.”

His tone is certain enough, but she’s still not sure if she can believe him.

“Still pretty?”

Mike’s reaction would make her laugh if she wasn’t so anxious for the answer—his eyes widen like he’s not used to someone being so candid, so straightforward (which is silly, because Dustin certainly doesn’t hold back what _he’s_ thinking).

“Yeah! Pretty. _Really_ pretty.”

She feels like her heart may fly out of her chest and wonders how something so special could happen not only to her, but so soon in the wake of everything else that’s been happening. She also registers that she thinks she hears something outside, but shoves the thought away in a way that she definitely shouldn’t given the situation that they’re in right now. But it’s hard to be concerned about anything else when Mike is suddenly _so close_ , warmth radiating off him and pink on his cheeks, and she’s leaning in, too. What she’s anticipating, she doesn’t quite know, but there’s _something_ there, a feeling for which she has no name—but, god, she hopes she does soon—taking over entire body and threatening to make her float to the ceiling (which she physically can, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility…).

But then Dustin is bursting in—where did he even _come_ from?—and things are falling apart once again. Or they likely never stopped falling apart in the first place.

She knows that the elephant in the room (abandoned school bus, rather) is that they’re only in this situation because of _her_ , but she’s grateful that none of them point it out. The man that comes to get them (the “chief,” the boys call him) stops her as she’s passing, giving her a strange, searching look as he rests his hand on her shoulder. It doesn’t stop with that, though.

The chief has his eyes on her multiple times throughout the night, looking as though he’s remembering something. In part, his presence makes her feel oddly strong and capable (well, she knows she’s capable—she can snap bones with a twitch of her nose) when it comes to what she knows she needs to do. He’s strangely comforting in the way older men in her life have never been.

Talking to Will’s mom feels like a warm hug. She almost envies him. Aside from the fact that he’s probably only moments away from being demogorgon food, that is. He has a family that really cares about him, the way families should probably always be.

As she steps into the bath, it’s scary, but a different kind of scary. She doesn’t want to disappoint anyone, but for different reasons, this time. Because this time there’s Will and his mom and Mike and Dustin and Lucas and even the chief. People who really _care_ and they’re counting on _her_. Not as a weapon, but to find someone who matters to them.

She can’t dwell on that for long, though, because then there’s _Barb_ and she’s gone and it’s awful, so awful. She already knows it’ll take so long to erase that image from her head—Barb, cold and blue and sick and _gone_ , covered in sludge and slugs. But then Joyce is comforting her and it’s just enough to help her carry on and a part of her hopes that maybe someday they (or anyone, really) could care about her just as much as they clearly care about Will.

And there he is.

Not gone. But certainly close. He looks nothing like the happy, science-fair-winning boy she saw in the photo at Mike’s ( _god_ , was that really only just _days_ ago?).

There’s not much she can do after that. Literally. She’s never been so, _so_ drained. And she realizes it’s because _she cares_ , too. She wants Will to be okay, wants him to come back to the people who love him, and if she had even an ounce of energy in her she’d probably even try to get him herself. But she doesn’t, so all there is to do is wait.

She can’t decide if she finds Mike’s shaking knee irritating or comforting, but, regardless, she doesn’t have the heart or strength to ask him to stop. It’s almost like the action is keeping her tethered to the earth, reminding her that she’s still _here_ and _alive_. And the chief’s shirt in and of itself feels like a luxury, another source of warmth that she’s desperately clinging to right now, even if the smell lingering on it makes her scrunch her nose.

Then Lucas and Dustin go off to find _put-ting_ and Mike is telling her about his mom’s cooking and a _real bed_ and she’s still so drained and tired that she doesn’t even try to stop herself from believing him, from buying into the dream that he’s selling in a way that her alert self wouldn’t ever let her get her hopes up for.

“Will you be like my brother?” She asks, trying to follow his train of thought (it’s hard, sometimes, given how fast and how much he talks).

“What?” Mike’s expression, again, is almost comical, but El is too desperate for his response to be amused. “No, no.”

She doesn’t understand—does he want her in his life like someone he cares about, or not? “Why no?”

“Cause- cause it’s different,” he starts, and she understands less than ever, but her curiosity is officially beyond piqued and, quite frankly, this conversation is the only thing keeping her upright.

Then she remembers.

“Mike,” she starts. “Friends don’t lie.”

She knows she’s got him at that point, and she doesn’t even feel bad about it, because even though he’s sighing he’s also explaining the Snow Ball and, wow, she’s never wanted anything more in her life even if she only knows a fraction of the words he’s saying.

“You go to school dances with someone that you, y’know, someone that you like.”

She does not know.

He seems nervous, which is funny, because he’s actually rarely nervous, but she thinks she almost likes him better this way.

“A friend?”

Then his lips are touching hers and she’s glad he stopped his sentence because words don’t do _this_ , whatever it is, justice, and suddenly she understands _everything_ (well, not really, not even close, but all she knows is that she really, _really_ wants to go to the Snow Ball).

Again, the moment gets ruined, like they’re always prone to. Even with Mike’s hands clutching hers in the science lab, grounding her as the whole entire world feels like it’s falling apart and the demogorgon is at their backs, it’s not enough to distract her from what she knows she needs to do.

Saying goodbye to him may very well be the single hardest thing she’s ever done—or one of the hardest things, anyway, since finding out _Papa_ wasn’t really much of a “papa” after all is quite high on the list (she’s still learning that, too, unfortunately). She hated the feel of his large hands against her head and face, wishing she could go back to the time when those hands were replaced by Mike’s and a cool washcloth.

She and the demogorgon have an odd sort of understanding, in a way, and she knows that she’s the only one who can truly match it when push comes to shove (though Lucas tries, bless him).

The last thought she has as she feels like she’s being ripped apart—torn limb-by-limb with all her parts splintering and scattering themselves across the dark, mirrored universe—is of the promise Mike made to her only moments earlier (it feels like lifetimes ago, so much has changed in mere minutes).

When she wakes up minutes or days or months later in the Upside Down, she almost feels like everything was just some big marathon dream-nightmare wrapped up in one, that soon she’ll wake up _for real_ in her bed (if you could call it that) in the lab, being jostled by someone telling her it’s time for tests. But then she notices the chief’s shirt, gingerly runs a finger over the glossy window of Mike’s watch and remembers that it was real. All of it.

She feels as though she’s been stitched together like the ragdoll Mike put in the fort once, claiming Holly didn’t want it because she said it “looked scary,” but it doesn’t stop her from getting up and calling his name anyway. She goes quietly enough into the night once she realizes Mike’s nowhere to be found, resigning herself to the fact that she’ll be living in the woods once more, not unlike those times so many days ago (well, they weren’t actually that long ago, were they?).

It doesn’t take long for her to find the box in the woods, thankful for seemingly the one stroke of luck she’s experienced in her entire life (aside from meeting Mike, obviously)—when other animals don’t get ahold of the food first, that is.

It’s a particularly cold day when everything changes. Some creatures have been getting to the box before her, so she hasn’t eaten in days, and the damp flannel is doing little to fight off the chill (not to mention the snow soaking through her canvas sneakers). She just...faints. She thinks she hears voices before it all goes black, but all she can do is desperately hope they won’t even see her.

Then there really _are_ voices, and hands shaking her shoulders, and one voice booming over the rest and strong arms lifting her off the cold, wet ground.

When she wakes up again she’s not sure where she is. She knows she should be scared, prepared to _fight_ and _escape_ like she’s done so many times, but she’s still so, so tired. It’s not until she hears the voices again that she opens her eyes.

“So explain to me _again_ what happened.” It’s the chief!

“Wewerewalkinginthe-”

“We’reinthewoodsand-”

“Shut _up_ , Dustin.”

“Let me _finish,_  Lucas.”

It’s Lucas and Dustin! She wants to get up, run to them and hug them and tell them how much she misses them, but she doesn’t have anywhere near enough energy for that.

“One at a time,” the chief sighs, pinching between his eyes.

Lucas shoots Dustin a look that makes El want to laugh. “We were out on Mirkwood, cutting through to see if any of the hills looked good enough for sledding. Then we saw El. She was just lying there.”

“She was really cold,” Dustin adds, nodding.

“Alright,” Chief Hopper nods, hands on his hips.

“Can we ask _you_ something, chief?” Dustin asks with a raised eyebrow.

“I guess,” he grumbles.

“What were you doing out there? And carrying Eggos!” Dustin points a finger at the large man (she finds it funny how none of the boys seem to be intimidated by the chief despite him being double their size—but, then again, she isn’t really intimidated by him, either).

“Not a _word_ of this,” the chief shifts his eyes between the two of them. “There’s still lab stuff that needs to be sorted out, which you both _know_. Don’t be idiots about this.”

“Us? Idiots?” Lucas looks offended with his hand on his chest.

All the chief does is laugh.

“So is this where she’s gonna live now?” Dustin jumps in—El kind of wants to know this, too.

“ _Jesus_ , kid, you literally just found the girl,” Hopper sighs. “Look, go home before your parents can worry about you. And do _not_ speak about this, especially not on your little walkie talkies.”

“Supercom,” Dustin huffs, correcting him.

“Sorry?”

“It’s _called_ a supercom.”

“Great,” the chief just rolls his eyes and El thinks this would be a much funnier situation if she didn’t know that her sole presence, yet again, is putting people in danger.

“I mean, with all due respect, chief,” Lucas adds as Hopper is already ushering them out the door. “We can’t just _not_ tell Mike about this.”

El involuntarily warms just at the mention of him and Hopper just scoffs, slamming the door behind the two boys.

But, soon enough, her eyes are drifting shut again and she doesn’t come back down to earth until the chief informs her that it’s been three days. Before she can focus on that fact, she hears a pounding on the door that has her heart up in her throat. Nothing good can come of knocks like that.

Except, this time, it actually does.

Mike practically forces himself inside, rushing to the side of the couch she’s become well acquainted with over the past few days.

“El!” He cries, grabbing onto her hand not unlike the last time she saw him (under much more _dire_ circumstances). “You’re up! I’ve come by every day since the guys told me, but Hopper wouldn’t let me see you because you were still sleeping. Do you feel okay?”

Friends don’t lie, so she just shrugs.

“I thought you- I thought,” he starts, but trails off, gulping.

“Mike,” she finally speaks, placing her free hand on top of where her and Mike’s are already clasped. “I understand.”

His shoulders slump in relief, then. “You always do.”

Mike’s eyes go comically wide after that, eyebrows raising and cheeks burning red as if he didn’t mean to say that out loud (but why? What was wrong with that?).

“I didn’t mean to, uh- I was just-”

He looks so silly, eyes wide and mouth gaping with no sound coming out, so all she can really do is laugh.

“Remember the Snow Ball?” Mike asks, back to his normal self, then.

El nods enthusiastically. How could she possibly forget?

“I’m, uh, I’m gonna ask Hopper about it today,” he brightens, hand squeezing hers. “It’s in a week. I think tickets are still on sale.”

“Cool,” she smiles and he mirrors it instantly.

“Cool.”

“Time’s up, kid,” Hopper barks from his seat in the kitchen, making Mike jump up and release her hand like he was caught doing something wrong.

El feels _her_ cheeks get warm, now.

“Bye Mike,” she smiles, tight-lipped.

Mike sighs, fingers fidgeting. “Let’s uh, not say ‘bye,’ okay? How about just…'see you later’?”

She smiles for real, now, all teeth. “See you later.”

Then the chief is practically dragging Mike out the front door by his collar. She’s not able to hear anything said beyond that point, unfortunately.

Nothing exciting happens for a bit. Literally, _nothing_. It’s bittersweet, El thinks (she found a book called a _dictionary_ in the cabin one day when she was poking around while Hopper was out), how she had much more freedom when she first got out compared to now, and she almost wonders if she’d rather trade her current safety for the ability to just be out in the world.

But, soon enough, she doesn’t have to make that choice. _Kind of_.

She’s minding her business, reading the dictionary (she appreciates that Hopper lets her practice her _sen-ten-ces_ with him even though he doesn’t have to) when there’s a commotion outside (she just learned that word, too) that has the chief reaching for the gun (she didn’t have to look that one up…) at his waist and yelling at her to stay inside.

But she sees him through the window. She’d recognize that white hair anywhere. The man, tall and imposing, not in the way Hopper is—he’s more of a grizzly bear in stature and demeanor—but in a more sinister, secret way. Her curiosity gets the best of her and she edges closer to the window. There’s a small crack in it and she can make out the voices outside if she just _focuses_.

“You know the girl belongs with us,” his cold, stern voice says, and it almost feels like she’s back in the lab again, being told to do another test or go to bed without eating because she did something bad. “Come back to Papa, Eleven.”

Her blood runs cold, feeling like she’s been caught doing something wrong, shame immediately coming over her. She wonders if his face is mangled. It’s only been a little over a month since the _altercation_ in the school, surely it wasn’t long enough to undo all that damage—and she’s not so naive that she can’t assume how bad it is, she’s been up close and personal with all those _teeth_ , that terrible breath, and taste for blood.

“You’re a sick fuck, you know that?” Hopper’s voice responds (she’ll have to look those words up later, assuming she makes it out of this alive).

“You thought you could just get away with not holding up your end of the deal?” Papa scoffs and El files her questions away for another time (yet another thing she doesn’t know). “You should know now not to underestimate us, Jim.”

And then for a few minutes, no words are spoken, only sounds, loud and angry. But one is unmistakable—a gun. She can’t see them through the window, anymore, so she can only hope it’s Hopper’s and not Papa’s or any of the other bad men’s.

The silence that follows scares her. She gives it a few seconds before she’s approaching the door, the need to _know_ burning through her and overcoming her fear. She can kill, after all (but only if she needs to these days).

She has one hand on the door knob and another poised to use her powers when Hopper bursts through, clenching his shoulder with one hand.

“B-blood,” she calls out, pointing at said shoulder where the red is staining his shirt.

“Don’t go out there,” he gasps. “You don’t need to see that.”

She doesn’t know how to react when it seems like he’s more concerned about _her_ than his own arm, his own _life_. It feels like she’s swallowed a stone and makes her feel warm all at once.

She’s not the smartest—boy, does she know that—but she’s seen death and destruction enough in this lifetime that she can deduce what the outdoor silence and lack of Hawkins Power & Light vans revving up means.

“Papa,” she breathes out. “ _Gone_?”

“Y-yeah, kid,” the chief confirms, his grip tightening on his arm. “Gone.”

El doesn’t realize she’s even crying until she tastes a salty tear on her lips.

“You’re safe now, alright?” He assures her, wincing in what she knows is pain.

She wants to help, do _something_ , but her helping skills are frustratingly limited. Luckily, Hopper speaks again.

“Here’s what we need to do, kid,” he’s breathing heavily now. “Go under the sink in the bathroom—there’s a first aid kit in there, grab that and a towel.”

She does as he says and, soon enough, she’s trying to patch him up as well as she can, following his instructions the way she’d follow when Papa told her what to do in the bath.

“Good job,” he ruffles her hair, still grunting through the pain. “But we still need to go.”

“Go?”

“I need to get this checked out and you’re coming with me.”

Though the situation is scary, she can’t help the excitement that buzzes through her at the idea of going _out_ . He leads her to his truck, covering her eyes with his hand until she shakes it off, insisting that she needs to _see it_ —to really _know_. And, well, it’s real, alright. Papa is there in the snow, would look like he was sleeping if it weren’t for the red pooling beneath his head. And she was right—scars are unmistakable on his pale, old face. She gasps, almost like she hadn’t believed it up until that moment, even though Hopper told her and she has no reason not to trust him at this point.

She’s staring. She doesn’t realize it until the chief lightly grabs her arm (nothing like Papa’s grip), telling her she’s seen enough and it’s time to go. Her chest hurts, a dull ache that spreads through her without even realizing it. She never thought this day would come, so she’s wholly unprepared for it. It almost feels underwhelming, in a strange way. It all happened so fast. One minute he was alive, the next he wasn’t—nothing like the inhumane and duly torturous (for her and them) ways he’d make her hurt animals in the lab.

She learns two new names that night—Dr. Owens and Murray Bauman. Owens patches up Hopper’s shoulder, but El still keeps her distance from him. She’s slow to trust these days and, well, she’s not sure how close she really wants to be to someone associated with the lab (for what it’s worth, Hopper makes similar comments in the truck which makes her feel a bit better). Bauman is only mentioned, supposedly he’s some guy that’s been bugging Hopper for years and he “can’t believe he’ll actually be useful for once.” He says something about the man helping them take down the lab, but there are plenty of words El doesn’t know yet and, quite frankly, after a day like today, she’s too tired to fit any extra words in her head.

El moves like she’s in a fog for days after that, much to the chief’s clear concern. She should be ecstatic (a new word, Hopper thought learning it might make her feel better)—the man who kept her prisoner for years is gone and the lab is well on its way to being closed for good—but it’s a strange feeling, knowing that your previous parental figure died in your new yard and the place where you spent the first god knows how many years of your life will be condemned. More than anything, she’s just happy it means they can’t hurt anyone anymore. But when it comes to her, she figures the damage is already done.

She’s only broken out of the haze from an insistent knocking on the door one random evening (she can’t be bothered to know what day it is, what’s the point when she’s still stuck inside?). Hopper called out of work and has been acting weird all day in a way that just makes her roll her eyes. He practically trips over himself to answer the door before her—not that it matters much, because she already knows to never answer it unless she feels like being rebellious that day—glancing back and forth at her form on the couch as she pays him little mind, turning her attention back to the dictionary in her lap.

“El!” She hears it before she sees anyone, but she already knows it’s Dustin.

 _This_ catches her interest immediately and she shuts her book, making sure to mark her page first.

The sight that greets her brings the most dazzling smile to her face—Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and even _Will_ are standing in the living room, dressed fancier than she’s ever seen anyone besides the stars in the magazines Hopper’s started bringing her (not without grumbling about it, of course).

“Wh-what?” El blinks multiple times. “What is this?”

Mike steps forward and her heart involuntarily leaps (it’s a funny, foreign, and warm feeling). “Um, the Snow Ball is tonight, El. Hopper told me you couldn’t go so, uh, I figured we could bring it here.”

She sees the boys behind him nodding to confirm his statement, and it’s all so sweet that she could cry. So she does. Mike, naturally, takes this the wrong way, his face pale and eyes panicked.

“It’s stupid, I guess. Too much, I should’ve known-”

“Relax, kid,” the chief comes seemingly out of nowhere, placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I don’t think she’s upset.”

“I- I’m not,” El confirms, shaking her head. “Thank you.”

“Of course, El!” Lucas jumps in and she beams and Mike’s cheeks are finally back to their normal, pinkish color (well, normal as far as she’s seen, at least).

“Mike _really_ wanted to take yo- _oof_ ,” Dustin started, being interrupted by a swift jab to the ribs from Mike.

This only serves to make El’s smile even bigger.

It’s not until they’re “decorating” the cabin (Hopper’s even helping, a fact that makes her giggly) that she gets a moment alone with Will, the boy sliding up to her as she’s haphazardly sticking paper snowflakes onto the fridge with magnets.

“H-hey, El,” he says, quietly.

“Hello,” she greets, then remembers her manners. “How are you?”

“Good,” he nods. “Better...thanks to you.”

El just shrugs at this—she’s not quite sure what the right response is, but she also knows it’s technically true.

“I wanted to thank you,” he speaks again, putting down the marker he’s been fidgeting with. “It was scary...in there.”

“I know,” is all she says, and then they’re hugging, fiercely like they’ve known each other for lifetimes.

It’s not until they break apart that he says anything else. “The boys told me a lot about you. Mike, especially.”

“Really?” Her eyes go wide in shameless curiosity, cheeks tinged with pink. “Like what?”

He laughs, pretending to look around suspiciously before cupping his hands around her ear and whispering the most harmless secrets about Mike and the boys.

Once they’re done decorating, they’re almost too tired to do more than sit on the couch. Hopper’s dusted off his record player—which Lucas immediately took over—and Dustin is flopped across the living room chair, hand filled with cheese puffs that he’s trying to toss into Will’s (and his own) mouth. Will is sitting on one side and Mike is on the other, hanging on her every word as she tells him about the events of the past week (even the parts that hurt).

“I’m really glad he’s gone, now, El,” Mike says in fierce a way that sends a shiver down her spine.

“Me, too,” she nods as he grabs her hand tightly.

“Hopefully you can come out of the cabin soon,” he says, eyes full of hope.

“I wish,” she grumbles, narrowing her eyes at Hopper in the corner in a way that makes Mike laugh.

Then the song abruptly changes to something slower and softer and she almost doesn’t catch the sly look that Lucas passes to Mike, making the freckled boy roll his eyes.

“D’you, uh,” he stammers and El can feel the clamminess of his hand. “ _Doyouwannadance_?”

“I don’t know how,” she gulps.

“I don’t either,” he shrugs. “Wanna figure it out?”

She simply answers by standing, Mike laughing as she yanks him up from where their hands are still intertwined. Dancing is strange, she thinks. It’s mostly just taking small steps, but not really going anywhere. But it doesn’t stop her from feeling like she’s _floating_ , hands secure in their place on Mike’s soft jacket and still clad in her flannel pajamas. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Will, Lucas, and Dustin attempting a three-person slow dance, tripping over each other, but she mostly only has eyes for Mike.

 

**GO TO THE NEXT CHAPTER**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so no quarry scene, I decided to skip it to avoid feeling repetitive. Also plot hole..no gate closing. I kind of touch on that situation later, but not explicitly.


	8. Crazy for You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long one, ladies and gents (because ending chapters at a respectable length? Never met her).
> 
> Also this is probably my favorite chapter of the whole thing, just saying.

Life gets decidedly less fun after that. Hopper tells her that, while their “little impromptu Snow Ball” was fun, nothing like that will be happening anytime soon. And now there are _rules_.

“No leaving the cabin unless it’s with me. No mucking around with phone or radio wires or any of that stuff. No having people over—no, not even the Wheeler kid—without my permission first,” he rattles them off in a way that has El clenching her fists to distract her from rolling her eyes. “And, most importantly, no dessert before dinner. Not even Eggos. Our motto? _Don’t be stupid_.”

She groans, then, throwing her head against the back of the couch and pinching her eyes shut. Hopper doesn’t speak for a few minutes, but she hears some shuffling around the cabin.

“Hey, stop sulking and gimme a hand,” he speaks up.

She recognizes the device immediately—an old TV, definitely older than the one at Mike’s, but _still_. She thinks it’s probably as much for Hopper’s own sanity as it is for hers. They push it into the center of the room, smack-dab in front of the couch.

“Last rule,” Hopper starts, continuing before El even gets a chance to huff. “No TV until you’ve done your reading.”

So, yeah, while there are rules, there’s also _TV_.

The passage of time is a bit painstaking. Most of the time, she and Hopper are like oil and water (he’s started bringing her more books, school ones, and mentioned something about a _tutor_ someday), fighting over every possible thing, partially just because El is _bored_. She tries—more than once—to convince him to let her go out for a bike ride on the rare occasions the boys (or just Mike) are actually allowed over, but he never budges, telling her that “closing the lab will take time, kid.”

So she waits. She learns as much about _Anne of Green Gables_ as she does about _Days of Our Lives,_ and she thinks she likes them both the same.

It’s three months later that she wakes up to three newspaper clippings out on the kitchen table and Hopper already gone. Judging by where the sun is (yes, she slipped outside to see—don’t tell Hop), she assumes he must’ve let her sleep in. It’s a Sunday and Mike is due to come over soon (she knows because her—formerly Mike’s—watch says it’s 1-1-4-5 and they made plans for 12 noon), causing her to panic over just how mussed her hair is from sleep. According to Hopper, she either sleeps like a log or like she’s running a marathon. Which is funny, because she hasn’t had a dream in a long time that would influence either.

She’s barely changed into her overalls and pastel tee when she hears the secret knock, right on time.

“Hi!” Mike greets, voice squeaking in a way that makes her feel warm.

He’s been changing lately, getting taller in a way that she kind of doesn’t like because it just makes it feel like he’s even further away from her. Also his face is sharper than before, less soft (but his skin is just as soft, which she knows from the time she brushes some of his hair out of his eyes and he got the cutest blush on his face—she’s not shy about affection the way other people seem to be, and she finds that it’s one of the differences she actually _doesn’t_ care about).

“Hi, Mike,” she smiles, stepping forward to hug him in the same way that they always do whenever he’s over, now.

“So, I brought some games this time,” he explains, pulling so much from his backpack that El wonders if _he_ has powers that made it all fit in there.

“Wait,” she interrupts, eyes turning back to the small kitchen.

“What’s up, El?” He responds, alert as ever in his very _Mike_ way, giving her his undivided attention like he always does—he could be in the path of a tornado and would still stop to watch El tie her shoes if she asked him to.

“Can you, um, read this to me?” She asks, crossing the room to grab the pieces of paper Hopper left, handing them over and warming where their fingers touch.

Mike inspects them, gulping at the contents. “Are you sure?”

She just nods, leading him over to the couch, where they both take a seat.

“Okay,” Mike sighs. “First one. _Peaceful Death for Decorated Scientist. Dr. Martin S. Brenner, born June 7, 1922, died of natural causes last weekend in his Indianapolis home. Brenner is lauded as a revolutionary in science, particularly psychology and military research. He lived a long and fulfilled life, leaving behind a brother, Clifford, and wife, Susan. A public memorial ceremony is scheduled for next weekend in his hometown of Muncie, Indiana, where a statue will be erected in his honor_. That bast-”

“Go on,” El urges, cutting him off.

He huffs. “Alright. Second one. _Retraction:_ _Dear readers, in a prior issue, when reporting on the death of Martin Brenner, he was praised as a revolutionary science and research practitioner. Due to news that has since come to light regarding his work, that piece has since been retracted. There are also plans to remove the statue in Muncie.”_

El just gulps, and Mike continues, without reaction this time.

“ _Hawkins National Lab Closed After Death. The Hawkins National Lab has been closed and condemned after the death and subsequent cover-up of town resident and Hawkins High School student Barbara Holland. The lab was revealed to have been conducting covert military research, causing nuclear waste to pose a health hazard to nearby citizens, namely Holland. In addition to nuclear concerns, records of unauthorized human- and- animal-based experiments in unethical conditions were found. Dr. Martin S. Brenner, who died in December, was found to be at the center of the controversy, casting further doubt on the legitimacy and credibility of his earlier scientific findings.”_

“Wow,” she breathes out, not even realizing how tightly she’s squeezing Mikes free hand until she looks down and sees his fingers turning purple. She doesn’t understand all the words, but she doesn’t _need_ to. She just knows, deep in her bones.

Things change gloriously once the lab is officially exposed, including the promise of _school_. She won’t be ready to go in the fall, not even close, but Hopper calls high school a “strong possibility” if she can “put the work in,” and El is already swept up in both her hopes and fears that high school will be just like TV and the movies.

Ignoring Mike’s protests, Hopper _doesn’t_ leave tutoring up to Mike because he “doesn’t want them playing footsie all day while El’s supposed to be learning fractions”—El just rolls her eyes because 1. She doesn’t even know what “footsie” _is_ and 2. She’s actually able to pick up math very fast (numbers are easy, even P- _Brenner_ taught her those). Nancy helps a lot when she’s not busy with her job at the Hawkins Daily News and he also pays off Mr. Clarke to drop off extra copies of the school’s books and worksheets. It’s not the most efficient method, but, like most things in her and Hopper’s lives together, it _works_.

Another thing of note happens that summer—and, no, it’s not just Mike’s voice getting deeper, which makes her feel warm inside in the most peculiar way, but it does include him. She’s out back in the grass with the boys, celebrating passing the Hawkins High entrance exam with magazines and popsicles (well, she and Will are the only ones really reading the magazines, but Dustin is pretending not to).

She keeps glancing between the _Is He Ready to go Steady?_ quiz in front of her and Mike, recalling a conversation she had with Nancy about boys and crushes and _boyfriends_ a few weeks back.

“Hey Mike?” She calls out, innocently enough.

“Yeah, El?” He immediately looks up from his worn copy of _The Hobbit_ that he’s reading for the billionth time (for DMing inspiration, he said).

“Are you my boyfriend?” She asks, the same way Hopper asks her how she wants her eggs or Will asks if she’s sick of listening to The Clash for another consecutive time.

Lucas chokes on his popsicle at this, earning him enthusiastic pats on the back from Dustin, who’s also watching the situation with pure amusement—probably because Mike’s face is the most ridiculous thing she’s ever seen. His cheeks are burning red, eyes are wide, and mouth is gaping like a fish (and it isn’t even the first time El’s seen him react like this, which makes it even funnier).

“Uh- um. D-do you want?” Mike chokes out, and for the first time in a long time, El doesn’t understand him.

Will steps in, looking exasperated. “Maybe you guys should go for a walk or something.”

“Y-yeah!” Mike looks at Will as if he’s just gifted him with a limited edition baseball card (that’s something people care about, according to Hopper).

El just shrugs, getting up to follow him, at least somewhat excited over the thrill of leaving the property without telling the chief. Somewhere in the background she can hear Dustin scolding Will because he wanted to “watch the carnage” and then Mike is throwing him a middle finger with the hand not already occupying hers.

They find a random rock in the woods that’s big enough for the both of them and El plops down unceremoniously, not really getting why they needed privacy in the first place (she thought she knew all the reasons people needed privacy by now, but she guesses she was wrong).

“Do you want me to? B-be your boyfriend, I mean?” Mike stammers in his exasperatingly adorable way.

“I mean,” El shrugs. “Don’t you already act like it?”

“I guess,” he looks down shyly. “So, you would want to be my girlfriend?”

“Yes,” she practically gasps, because she can’t really imagine anything she wants more than that (besides going to school, probably, but then again, school could _suck_ ).

“O-okay,” Mike nods, but El can still tell he’s very much stuck inside his own head, so she does the only thing she can think of.

She kisses him. It’s a small, giddy peck, but it doesn’t stop her insides from feeling like the jelly she puts on her Eggos sometimes and her heart beating fast in her chest.

And that’s that, then.

 

* * *

 

Her first day of high school is a bit of a whirlwind, particularly walking right into a red-haired girl that tells her to _“watch it”_ and scares her half to death—it’s almost scarier than a demogorgon because _that_ she could prepare for, but _this_ , this is high school.

“I’m sorry!” She calls out, eyes snapped shut to prevent her tears from leaking out.

“Whoa, hey. Are you good?” The girl asks and El has half a mind to tell her to go away already so she can cry in peace, but she doesn’t. “Look, it’s not a big deal. Just be more careful next time, yeah?”

El finally opens her eyes, sighing. “Yeah. Yeah, sorry.”

“I’m Max,” she continues. “Mayfield.”

“El,” she nods. “El Hopper.”

“El stand for anything?” Max raises an eyebrow.

They’ve begun walking down the hall together and El racks her brain for the story she and Hopper (and the boys) have been practicing for weeks.

“Eleanor,” she scrunches her nose.

“Oh, nickname makes sense. Eleanor sounds like an old lady.”

El can’t fight the laugh that bubbles up in her throat, forcing itself out of her mouth loudly. She’s been full of nervous energy all day, so having a reason to laugh feels better than it usually already does.

It’s not until they’re in the cafeteria that El sees Mike again, the boy stopping in front of her with a gasp.

“El!” He exclaims, looking like he just finished a marathon. “There you are! I was afraid you got lost or-”

“Mike,” El puts a placating hand on his shoulder before gesturing to her left. “I was just walking with someone.”

Mike looks mortified at this (El just thinks it’s cute) and El just rolls her eyes before poking him in the ribs. “Introduce yourself, headcase.”

She learned “headcase” from Dustin over the summer, much to Hopper’s (and Mike’s, in this moment) chagrin.

“Mike Wheeler,” he shoves his hand out toward Max, his shoulders finally done heaving after having apparently jogged to the cafeteria.

“Max Mayfield.”

“This is my _boyfriend_ ,” El supplies in her delightfully teasing way, bouncing up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek as she does so.

“Cute,” Max rolls her eyes, but she’s still smiling. “I may puke. Anyway—where should we sit?”

Max becoming part of the Party is as easy as breathing (not to mention the fact that Lucas—easily the Party’s most stubborn member and, no, El doesn’t hesitate to give him good-natured shit about it even to this day—is immediately smitten with her makes it much easier), and Hopper is _thrilled_ that El finally has a female friend to hang around with sometimes, rather than just those “hooligans.”

El makes them go to all the school dances, even though Mike assures her that they’re _nerds_ and it’ll be nothing like the Snow Ball was (she prefers the one they had in her living room, anyway, so this does nothing to dissuade her).

She still gets bad dreams, once in a while, but with surroundings more comforting, it’s easier to recover when she wakes up, panting and with sweat dripping from her forehead. She and Hopper (with ample amounts of help from Joyce Byers, much to her elation and pure amusement) have turned the cabin into the perfect amalgamation of the two of them—their _family_ . He keeps things running and repaired while El insists on adding “home-y” touches—a photo frame here or corkboard there (which she leaves him silly notes on all the time, all of which he keeps), none of it really matching, but all of it being clearly _them_. Her friends love hanging out there, and for once she’s glad that they come over because they genuinely enjoy it and not because she’s confined.

Things feel gloriously, domestically _regular_ for a long time in a way that makes El wish it could be like this forever, but soon enough, something breaks. It’s like an avalanche, really. (An _“avalanche of shit_ , _”_ is what Max ultimately names it later down the line, once it’s all over.)

 

* * *

 

 

In a move that surprises everyone but El, Will is the first to get his license in sophomore year. It represents a sense of independence that, until then, he’s never had the luxury of experiencing—thanks to being under the watchful eye of both Hawkins Lab and a demogorgon, then his mother’s (understandingly) overbearing gaze for the years after that. So when El unexpectedly shows up at his door early on a Saturday morning asking to go on a drive, he says yes without hesitation.

“Should we pick up Mike?” Will asks.

“No.”

She squirms in her seat in discomfort over this—she hates keeping things from him, even though he’s assured her time and time again that she has every right to. It’s one of many reasons why he’s so good for her.

The drive is long, about an hour, which, for high schoolers’ attention spans, might as well be six days. El directs him all the while, silently marveling at the blind trust that Will has in both her navigation skills and just _her_ as a person.

And then they’re there—Washington Park Cemetery.

“Um, El…” Will starts once she already has one leg out of the car. “What are we doing here?”

“You’ll see,” El shrugs. “Don’t worry.”

They stand a ways off, at first, El’s eyes narrowing at the headstone that seems to glisten in mockery in the late morning sunlight. She’s examining it from a distance, as if she thinks he could pop out at any second and tell her that the bath is waiting, that today they make contact. Yeah, they’re _making contact_ , alright.

She grabs Will by the wrist, him dragging his feet slightly as they get closer.

 

MARTIN S. BRENNER _(“Maybe the S stands for ‘Son-of-a-bitch,’” Dustin had remarked once.)_

JUNE 7 1922 - DECEMBER 10 1983

LOVING HUSBAND, SON, AND BROTHER

 

“Notice it doesn’t say _‘friend,’_ ” Will scoffs under his breath.

El doesn’t really know what to make of what’s right in front of her. Somewhere in her body, she thinks she feels pain—for herself or for him, she doesn’t really know. She remembers his cold, dead, marred face. White hair, terrifying eyes (even from behind his closed eyelids, she could never forget what they looked like). She also feels anger, anger that, if she doesn’t get a hold of it _soon_ , will likely have her unearthing things, and there isn’t really a _worse_ place for that to happen than here.

Will, seeming to sense this, speaks again. “Maybe we should go, El.”

She doesn’t budge, though. She has a strong urge to yank the flowers close to the headstone out, tear them petal by petal—they look fresh, as if someone out there _still cares_ about him—but she doesn’t do that, either.

Instead, without warning, she just _spits_ on it, right there on the perfectly green spring grass. And Will can’t help but laugh from his spot next to her, probably because it’s just so uncharacteristic of her these days. Sure, she has her fierce streaks (particularly when she and Mike are having an especially dumb argument or someone at school called Will “queer” or she’s attempting—and failing—to beat Max at _anything_ at the arcade), but for the most part she’s quiet, soft, and gentle, keeping her more aggressive or angry thoughts up in her head after nearly a lifetime of coping with and expressing them in all the wrong (and often destructive) ways.

Will, following her lead, flips his middle finger at the gray stone (something he never really started doing until they met Max, which makes El laugh). She grabs his hand again, then, using her free one to wipe her mouth with her sleeve—well, actually it’s Mike’s sleeve, but he doesn’t seem to have an aversion to her saliva, so she figures he won’t mind—before dragging them back towards the car.

The ride back to Hawkins is quiet until Will asks if she’s hungry and she replies with a _“god, yeah”_ and they’re pulling off to some greasy spoon of a diner.

When Hopper gets back from work that evening, he’s none the wiser about their little excursion, but El still feels guilt gnawing at her—guilt, but, more notably, a question.

“Hop?” She calls from her spot on the couch as her dad (yeah, she calls him that now) attempts to fix pasta for them both.

“Yes, kid?” He calls back, distracted as he stirs the sauce that’s seconds away from burning.

“I have a question.”

“What’s up?”

“No, like, an important question,” she insists, picking at her fingernails.

He sighs. “Can you give me five minutes? I swear I’m almost done here.”

She snorts. “Not likely. Dad, please? It’s important.”

Sensing her tone—and her use of “dad,” which is his kryptonite—he turns away from the stove, then, taking a long, hard look at El and her innocent, imploring face. He’s powerless.

Oh, and he burnt the sauce.

“Fuck,” he grumbles under his breath. “Pizza it is, I guess. Now, what’s up, Ellie?”

He’s now taken the seat across from her and his mood seems so light that she almost hesitates to ask what she needs to ask.

“Um,” she gulps, still looking at her fidgeting hands. “Back then...a long time ago. With B-Brenner-”

Hopper’s eyes go wide as he shifts in the chair, feet firmly planted on the floor and hands on each of its arms.

“When he came here,” she continues. “And mentioned something about a _deal_? What was that?”

For a few seconds, all she can hear is the clock ticking somewhere in the kitchen and Hopper’s sharp inhale of breath, followed by a shaky exhale and his hand running down his face. If possible, it looks like he just aged ten years. El almost regrets asking, but she wants—no _needs_ —to know.

“That _was_ a long time ago, Ellie,” Hopper sighs.

“Please,” she pleads, sounding absolutely desperate. “I need to know.”

She’s never seen her dad—Jim Hopper, chief of police, certified human fridge, half-man, half-grizzly bear—look so _small_ and anguished. He looks downright nervous, and if her eyes aren’t mistaking her (it’s a little hazy in there from that burnt dinner), there may even be a tear or two in his own.

“It was back when Will was still missing,” he explains with a shaky breath. “We knew those bastards had something to do with it. And we found out pretty quickly that you did, too. Will...we were convinced he was gonna die in there. So I offered them a deal—let us go in and get Will in exchange for bringing you back. I think about it every single day, Ellie, there’s nothing I regret more in my life, I-”

But El’s stopped listening. Her feet are carrying her into her room now, where she just crawls under her covers and stares up at the ceiling. She wants to liken this confession to a nuclear bomb, absolutely destroying the semblance of peace in their small, two-person home, but mostly all she feels is numb. He at least has the sense to not follow her.

She doesn’t leave her room that night, but she does overhear Hopper on the phone, likely with Mike, telling him that, no, it’s not a good night to come over. Sleep never comes.

She feels hollow, like she’s been gutted. But also like she missed the part where they look anything out, the part that actually _hurt_ , and instead she’s just here like an empty shell of a person. The person who promised—not necessarily in words, but surely in actions—to take care of her, the one who took her in, would’ve turned her back into her lifelong captors if given the chance ( _“if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids,”_ in the words of her favorite guilty pleasure cartoon reruns). But, on the other hand, he wasn’t wrong—Will was _dying_ in there. She thinks back to what happened likely the same night. She already sacrificed herself, how was this any different?

She doesn’t know how she ultimately feels, but the pang in her bladder is overpowering her need to brood. She steps out into the common area, nearly stepping on a slice of pizza Hopper must’ve left outside her door the night before.

Once she’s done in the bathroom, she comes out to Hopper sitting on the couch and she shrieks.

“ _Jesus_ ,” she cries at his imposing presence, trying to calm her breathing back to normal.

“Let’s talk,” he sighs, and he looks like pure, unadulterated _shit_ (she doesn’t look much better).

She sits on the opposite end, putting ample distance between them, and surprises even herself by talking first.

“I did something yesterday,” she gulps. “I went somewhere.”

“Hm?” Hopper turns to her.

“P-papa’s grave,” she sighs, not even correcting herself on his name for once.

“But Ellie, that’s-”

“Far,” she interrupts, nodding. “Will drove.”

“Um, alright. How do you feel?”

“I just needed to _see_ ,” she says, and then she breaks, sobbing. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, whoa, no,” Hopper is in full dad-mode, then, shuffling across the couch to wrap his arms around her, rocking her lightly on the couch. “You don’t apologize, here. You’re the kid. I’m the one who should be saying sorry.”

She falls asleep there, once she’s exhausted from crying and just, well, _everything_ , and she doesn’t actually wake up until it’s time for dinner. And even after dinner—leftover pizza—she’s back in her own bed in minutes, once she’s assured Hopper that she’s _fine_ , just tired. She doesn’t know if she’s fine, not at all, but she knows for a fact that she’s still exhausted.

She wakes up in a dark, wet, _loud_ place—cars and people she can only hear, but not see. She knows she’s supposed to be looking for someone, but it takes her eyes a bit to adjust. And then she sees.

It’s a girl. She has tanned skin and dark, half-shaved hair that El kind of envies, chipped purple nail polish and blood pooling beneath her nose. She’s running, now, and El has to struggle to keep up with her (especially because she’s shoeless and in pajamas). The girl’s clothes jostle a bit as she’s running (sprinting, really) and that’s when El sees _it_ —008, neatly on her wrist, plain as day and real and _there_ . But she can’t dwell on that much as the girl is running down some stairs, looking like she’s being swallowed up by the earth and it’s at that moment that El realizes the fear growing in the pit of her stomach isn’t her own, it’s this girl’s. She sees a sign that says Washington/Wabash, but she has no idea what the _hell_ that’s supposed to mean and suddenly the girl is jumping over something and slipping right into the doors of a waiting train (or at least she thinks it’s a train, it looks nothing like any train she’s ever seen in books, that’s for sure) and then she’s gone, her feelings of dread and alarm going with her and the tether between El and this girl—her _sister_ —snapping.

El wakes up, for real this time, with a fresh sheen of sweat on her forehead and the slow understanding of what she saw in the Void creeping in on her. Needless to say, despite it only being 3am, she doesn’t go back to sleep. She’s actually waiting on the Byers’ porch when Will steps out in the morning, effectively scaring the living shit out of him.

“Christ, Hopper,” he sighs. “I thought _I_ picked _you_ up in the mornings.”

“Woke up early,” she shrugs, shouldering her backpack before crossing the lawn towards his car.

He knows not to prod. He’s great like that.

Will is a few paces ahead when they approach the school, where Mike is already waiting, but El’s not so far off that she can’t hear their conversation.

“Hey,” Will greets. “You look like shit.”

“Hey!” El cries, affronted on his behalf. “Only I get to tell my boyfriend when he looks like shit.”

Will just rolls his eyes, laughing. “Well, you look equally bad, so maybe you guys can just become Hawkins’ cutest corpse couple.”

Mike merely flips him off with one of the hands around El’s back (despite it being true—she really does look as bad as she feels) because she’s already cradling his face in her hands, stroking her thumbs over his high cheekbones. And with that, Will knows he’s dismissed.

“Hi,” she says, softly (and, just like that, they’re in their own world).

“Hi,” he smiles, but it’s a tight, almost pained one. “I missed you this weekend.”

“Missed you, too,” she murmurs against his lips, just wanting to kiss him until she can’t remember Papas or sisters or deals or _anything_.

He acquiesces ( _pushover_ ) and she wishes she could just do this forever, which she tries, slipping her tongue into his mouth in the way that they’ve gotten used to and she knows just _melts_ him—it makes her feel powerful, having him like putty in her hands. But he pulls back, anyway, hair mussed and looking slightly crazed, like even he can’t believe that he had the self-control to do that.

“Wha-?” She asks, trying to regain her place within the earth’s gravitational pull.

“What happened?” He asks, releasing his hand from the back of her neck to intertwine their fingers.

“How long do you have?” She quirks an eyebrow, shrugging her backpack back onto her shoulder from where it slipped down while they were, um, _occupied_.

“Forever,” he shrugs.

“Cute,” she smirks, bumping a hip against his. “I’ll tell you at lunch—meet on the bleachers?”

“On them or _under_ them?” He laughs, almost fully back to his normal self.

“Don’t be fresh,” she points an accusatory finger at him in a way that makes her sound scarily like Hopper ( _that_ helps bring Mike back to earth, at least).

“See ya,” is all he says, pecking her on the cheek as they slip inside and the bell rings.

If you ask El, the morning passes too quickly for her liking, and soon enough she’s walking over to the bleachers, twisting her backpack straps in each respective hand. On one hand, she’s buzzing to see Mike—she hasn’t seen him since this morning (he’s in all honors, _nerd_ ) and she just feels this _pull_ to him (she thinks it’s always been there between them, even when they were just kids and she was practically bald and he wasn’t yet matching Hopper in height)—but on the other, she’s dreading having to relive the weekend she had.

She sees him from a distance, scribbling away at some notebook in his lap and she knows she can easily sneak up on him. So she does, creeping up behind him, careful to miss the particularly squeaky bench before she slips her hands over his eyes, lips close to his ear.

“Miss me?” She whispers, not missing the way his hands instinctively pop up, stiff, poised to grab hers in attack (ha, as if) before he realizes who it is.

“God,” he huffs, running a shaky hand through his hair as she giggles.

His hands are on her once hers are off him, though, and he wraps an arm around her waist, pulling her onto his lap until she has a leg on each side of his hips, arms clinging to his shoulders to keep her balance. It’s a precarious position for them these days (they’re sixteen and in love, and all—even if they haven’t outright said it _yet_ ), but she’s here to discuss a decidedly _unsexy_ topic, so she figures they’ll probably be okay.

“What’s going on up here?” He asks, lightly flicking her on the forehead.

“Mm,” she groans, scrunching her nose. “Too much.”

“Wanna tell me about it?”

“No,” she mutters. “I just wanna stare at you.”

He huffs out a laugh. “You do that all the time.”

She sighs. “I went on a drive with Will on Saturday. To Washington Park Cemetery.”

“A _cemetery_?” Mike’s eyebrows are mid-forehead. “What for?”

“That’s where Brenner is,” she answers, looking decidedly past him, eyes settling on a random point somewhere else.

“Oh,” he nods, understanding dawning on his features as his eyebrows settle back to their normal spot. “How do you feel?”

“Fine,” she shrugs. “The same, maybe. I just...I needed to see.”

“That’s...that’s okay, El,” Mike shakes his hair out of his eyes. “You do whatever you need to do. I could’ve gone, though. I would’ve.”

“I know,” she nods, her focus back on his face as she smooths his eyebrows down with a gentle thumb. “But I was okay. I was with Will.”

“I’m glad you weren’t alone,” he squeezes her tighter somehow, eliminating any remaining millimeters of space between them.

“Also, Hop-” she starts, but then thinks better of it, stopping. She knows Mike’s temper and a fight between her boyfriend and her dad is the last thing she needs right now.

“Hm?” He perks up, running his hand through her hair in a way that makes her want to fall asleep right there on the Hawkins High bleachers.

“Nothing, but I had a really strange dream last night-”

She tells him about her dream and then he tells her about his—an awful, depressing thing where El was drowning and Mike couldn’t get to her and then there was a demogorgon and something else a little too scarily _real_ to make it just comically absurd—and they just sit there for a while, El resting her head in the crook of Mike’s neck as he clings to her and it’s like they’re somewhere else, anywhere else, rather than cold high school bleachers smelling like smoke from the seniors sharing cigarettes beneath it.

When she gets home, Hopper is already waiting at the table, nervously shaking his leg (maybe _he’s_ adopting some of Mike’s traits, too). She’s not sure what to make of nervous Hopper, sure he’s softer, but it’s almost in an uncharacteristic way that, in turn, makes _her_ nervous.

“Hey dad,” she greets, trying to be airy as if he didn’t definitely hear her screaming in her sleep last night.

“Hey.”

“Whatcha got there?” El sits across from him, nodding at the papers he’s nervously shuffling in his hands.

“So I talked to doc Owens last night and, uh, after he got over the initial shock of hearing from me again, he was able to help me out a bit,” he explains, merely earning an eyebrow raise from El before he continues. “We talked about therapists, Ellie.”

“O-oh,” El blinks, considering.

“Do you ever think you’d want to talk to somebody?” He sighs, sliding the papers over to her. “I think I’d, uh, want to try it, too.”

She stares down at the papers, shuffling them. Four potential doctors, all women, all with _glowing_ reviews, apparently. Ironically enough, it’s really nothing she’s ever even considered, despite her desperate want to feel as “normal” as possible.

“W-what would I say?”

“Whatever you want to,” he shrugs. “Their job is to make _you_ feel better.”

“You’d go, too?” She feels like a kid again, grappling for reassurance and stability from whoever can provide it (sometimes it’s a kid with a blanket fort, otherwise it’s a man with a gun and propensity for showing up at work whenever he wants).

“I think so, yeah,” he nods, gulping. “God knows I have years of my own shit to work out.”

“I want to,” she nods, definitively.

“Yeah?”

"Yeah.”

He glows and it makes her feel warm and safe and like she’s doing the right thing.

“Why don’t you sit with those papers for a bit so you can choose one? I’ll start dinner.”

And, before she knows it, she has an appointment with Dr. Katherine Briggs this upcoming Saturday that she gets nervous just _thinking_ about. But Hop assures her—over and over—that this is a good thing. And god, does she hope so.

But first, it’s Thursday, and Mike comes over like he always does, because Hopper’s working late and, well, _duh_. They’re on her bed—again, like they always are—and El is straddling his waist, kissing him like she’ll just die if she doesn’t and right when it feels like her clothes are far too small for her body, like she needs to get even closer, he flips them, careful not to toss her off of the (inconveniently) twin-sized bed.

But before she can feel dizzy from the action, his lips are on her again, this time her neck, and he’s dropping featherlight kisses that make her giggle all the way into her cleavage (as if she wasn’t purposely wearing a v-neck on a Thursday, psht), until his mouth is off her momentarily. His nose pushes up the cotton of her t-shirt, then, and he blows a raspberry against the soft skin of her stomach, both making her laugh uncontrollably and making her _want_ , a heat pooling low in her belly. It would be so easy to do something about it, he’s literally _right there_ , but they’re not ready, and he knows it, and he knows exactly when to change before it just gets too much, too far.

It’s yet another thing that makes him great for her, that convinces El he was put on this earth solely for her—she knows she’s not supposed to think this way ( _possessive_ ), but it’s also hard not to when he seems to share the sentiment, especially when he’s back to kissing her in a way that makes her feel like he wants to swallow her whole.

“El,” he whispers once he finally comes up for air, hair a mess and lips red and wet.

“What?” She blinks up at him, also whispering, not wanting to break them out of the moment they’re in right now.

“I-” He stammers, eyes flitting somewhere past her for a split-second, then landing firmly back on her face, in her eyes. “I love you.”

El feels warmth from her head to her toes, all consuming and she’s never seen someone so _beautiful_ and, _wow_ , she really loves him, too.

“I love you, too,” she smiles back up at him, a watery thing, because somehow she’s thinking about both everything and nothing all at once—everything that makes them _them_ , how different life would be if they’d never met, if she’d taken a different turn. It’s the easiest thing she’s ever said.

She can’t help but gush about it to Hopper _and_ Max (via phone) once he’s left—even if it means that she totally calls herself out to her dad about the fact that, no, she and Mike don’t necessarily spend their Thursdays doing homework on the couch and “leaving room for Jesus” (Hop’s words, not hers)—and she doesn’t even care that they _both_ teasingly call her gross. She’s on a high that she never thinks she’ll come down from, only exacerbated by the fact that, wow, she already gets to see him the next day in school and they’re _in love with each other_. Quite frankly, all the soaps and rom-coms in the world greatly undersold this one.

Her high does come to an end, though (pretty abruptly), that Saturday morning. She breezily fills out the mass of paperwork in Dr. Briggs’ office, rhythmically tapping her toe to the filler waiting room music as she does so, leaning over to Hopper when she doesn’t know exactly what to answer.

“You don’t have to check ‘ _yes’_ for medications just because I gave you a Tylenol last week,” Hop corrects, and she grumbles, crossing it off and initialing the change like he tells her to.

“El Hopper?” A woman’s voice calls out serenely.

El stands, gulping, involuntarily clutching Hopper’s hand with the one that isn’t gripping the clipboard. “I, uh, I didn’t finish my papers.”

“Oh, that’s alright,” the woman waves a dismissive hand. “You can do that later. Come on back.”

She has a kind demeanor— _soft_ —and actually reminds her a bit of Joyce in a soothing way, despite looking nothing like her. Her hair is blonde, looking directly inspired by a yellow crayon, and she’s wearing red lipstick despite her generally pale skin and it’s making El question if her fashion magazines had been wrong about _everything_ (they insisted that ‘paleness + red lip = vampire look,’ but she thinks Dr. Briggs is pulling it off quite nicely, thank you very much). She’s also wearing what looks like the softest baby blue sweater known to man.

“So, El, what brings you into my office today?” She asks innocently enough.

El almost laughs, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “That’s a big question.”

“Okay,” She shrugs, moving on as easy as breathing. “Let’s start smaller—how are you feeling? Right now?”

“Fine,” she shrugs back. “Nervous, I think. But life is good, mostly.”

Dr. Briggs scribbles things in her notes, quirking an eyebrow at the teen as though she can tell there are still words waiting on her tongue.

“My boyfriend told me he loved me this week,” she gushes, practically melting into the chair with the goofiest grin on her face, almost as if she’s reliving the moment all over again.

“Ah,” the doctor smiles back, jotting something else down. “That _is_ big news. What’s this boyfriend’s name, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“Mike,” she giggles, feeling like a little girl who grew up with a childhood very unlike her own.

"Does Mike treat you well?”

“ _Too_ well, probably. He’s just so great. Kind and patient and soft and...he feels like my other half,” she sighs, but she’s serious, too, this isn’t just some lovesick Romeo and Juliet rambling, or something.

“Why _‘too’_ well?” Dr. Briggs points out. “Why shouldn’t he treat you well?”

She squirms at that one. It’s also a loaded question and, well, there are plenty of reasons why El thinks Mike Wheeler is too good for this world, too good for _her_ , and listing them out always just serves to make her feel like she could die. As if sensing her discomfort, the doctor speaks again.

“Hey,” she offers, soft as ever. “You don’t have to talk about that. Let’s move on. How’s your family?”

“My dad is the _greatest_. I got so lucky with him. He’s funny, like this big gruff teddy bear,” El smiles and the doctor smiles, too. “There were some bumps...before, but I know now that it’s all just because he cares.”

“Nice,” the doctor smiles warmly. “Solid support systems are very important for teen girls. Now, what about your mom?”

El’s mind goes blank in a way that bothers her. “Dr. Briggs, with all due respect, I don’t get why we need to talk about that.”

“Please, call me Katherine,” she says before continuing. “And, El, like I said, you don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to. But I think, over time, you’ll find out you _do_ want to—maybe even a lot.”

El is silent for a few moments, staring at her hands in her lap.

“We have thirty minutes left,” Katherine informs her, still as soft as ever. “We can spend it however you’d like—up to you.”

She gives it a few more minutes before things are just pouring out like word vomit.

“I don’t even think I have a mom. I mean, I know scientifically I do, but I’ve never known anything about her, ever in my life, and I’ve never really had the chance to think about her because it just _hurts_ , y’know? When I try to think of anything about a mom it’s just...blank. I have dreams, sometimes, about people—people I know, sometimes barely even a little bit. I can _see_ them, where they are and what they’re doing. And I’ve never in my life had one about her. I had one about a sister I never even knew existed the other night, but never my mom. Not anything even close. Why don’t I have a mom?” She’s gasping for air at the end of it ( _god_ , she sounds like Mike) and tears are burning at the corners of her eyes.

“El,” the doctor says, gently. “Do you think it might help to start from the beginning?”

Sighing, El grabs the tissue Katherine is holding out towards her and nods. And, well, the rest is history (kind of...sort of...not really). She doesn’t tell her _everything_ , but enough.

And while there’s a feeling of _slight_ weight lifted off her shoulders (it’s only day one, after all), it’s unfortunately been replaced by a fucking _boulder_ reminiscent of the one in the Indiana Jones movie the boys and Max made her watch last weekend. Or, better yet, it feels like a _hole_. Just this big, blank space where her mom is meant to be, in any form at all.

But then they get home and Hopper’s pulling a box out from the floorboards and if she weren’t so exhausted from crying, she likely would’ve burnt out a few light bulbs out of sheer emotional response. She has a mom, _alright_ . And she’s closer than she thought—no, not physically (physically she’s in Chicago, apparently), but all this information was _in the floor_ the whole time.

She doesn’t have it in her to be mad at Hopper right now. She’ll do it tomorrow.

The gnawing feelings don’t go away, though, and are only really exacerbated by how tight-lipped she is about the whole thing to the Party (Mike especially). Two more weeks have passed—two more Saturdays with Katherine—and the hole just seems to be getting bigger. It’s the following Wednesday when she’s slyly doing “research” in the library during her free period (and, yes, opting to not spend it making out with Mike for once was genuinely painstaking) that she nearly falls out of her seat. She’s absently flipping through a book about Chicago (yeah, Hopper would likely kill her if he knew what she was up to—double for Mike) when she sees it—the _sign_ . Washington/Wabash. Apparently that train was a _subway_ train in Chicago.

She feels excitement pulsing under her skin ( _sister_ ) mixed with a little bit of nausea and it’s those feelings that fuel her all the way home, staying decidedly silent in Will’s car out of fear that her plan will just fall out of her mouth on its own volition.

She’s going to Chicago.

On Friday.

She makes sure to tell Will she won’t be needing a ride, citing no reason (which he doesn’t bat an eye at, thankfully) in the mysterious way she’s prone to still be sometimes. Hopper taught her the difference between _good secrets_ and _bad secrets_ a long time ago—she figures this one falls somewhere in the middle.

Hopper goes in early on Fridays, earlier than she leaves for school, so, soon enough, she’s at the bus station shoving change to the attendant and _waiting_ . She changes her mind about four times in the five minutes before the bus pulls up, but ultimately gets on. She _needs_ to do this (even if it’s not really what Katherine probably meant when she mentioned eventually “coming to terms with her past”).

 

* * *

 

 

She finds Aunt Becky’s place in the Chicago suburbs, a little nicer than Hawkins, but not too far off. She knocks, persistent, before the door swings open with a sigh already greeting her on the other end.

“Sorry,” the woman huffs. “We’re not doing girl scout cookies this year.”

“Don’t I look a bit old to be a girl scout?” El raises an eyebrow and silently curses Hopper’s smart mouth for rubbing off on her. “S-sorry. I’m El. Or, well, _Jane_?”

“Jane who?” The woman she can already tell is Aunt Becky asks, flatly, but she notes the tiniest gasp that comes out of her mouth first.

“Does Terry live here?” She glances down at the paper in her hands. “Terry Ives?”

“Look, I don’t know what kind of prank you’re pulling here, kid, but you have five seconds to go before I’m calling the cops,” she sighs, and with a tiny thrill El can tell she’s right.

“Ma’am,” El attempts again, putting on her most polite voice. “I don’t mean to bother you. I just—I know this sounds crazy—I think Terry is my mom.”

“Wh-what?” Becky blanches. “You expect me to believe that? You’re sick.”

All El can do now is shove the papers— _evidence_ —into Aunt Becky’s hands and pray. It’s all there—certificates, newspaper clippings, even pages ripped out of scientific books and military magazines. The woman gasps, eyes growing wide at what she’s skimming, before she turns her attention back to El, her gaze scanning the street past her.

“Did anyone follow you here? Christ, get inside.”

“N-no, no one did. If you see on those papers, Martin Brenner is dead.”

“H-he is?” She gasps. “For real? Did you-”

“I saw it,” El confirms. “It’s true.”

“Where are your parents, Jane? Do they know you’re here?”

El ignores this. “I can’t stay long, I just wanted to give you that, I guess. And, um, is she here?”

Aunt Becky shows her to the room, the room that would’ve been _hers_ , and now it’s El’s turn to be taken aback. She honestly feels like she might vomit, and if it weren’t for the sight of her _literal mother_ right in the center of the room, she likely would’ve.

“Mama,” she gasps, taking the woman’s soft, cool hand and kneeling right in front of her.

“Sh- she’s,” Becky stammers, trying to _explain_.

“I know.”

Slipping into the Void with her is as easy as breathing, though her hands are still shaking. She sees it all, taking everything her mom is willing to give, filing it away for another time, she just needs to _process_. Like that earlier dream with the girl she calls her sister, she so deeply and painfully feels all that her mother is feeling, including an electric shock that has her wondering if she’ll still even be breathing in the real world. She isn’t sure if she feels better or worse once it’s done, reemerging with a fresh nosebleed and tears rolling down her face. It feels like a lifetime has passed—since she saw as much, basically—when, in reality, it was only a handful of minutes.

She tries to convince herself that she felt her mom squeeze her hand back. She kisses her on the cheek anyway.

“I-I need to go.”

El’s still shaking when she goes back out to where Aunt Becky is sitting with two mugs of tea.

“Will you be back?”

El can’t answer that, and all Becky can do is sigh.

“Well, thank you—for _this_ ,” she gestures with her hand still clutching the papers. “Oh, wait.”

And, next thing El knows, Becky is wiping the blood from under her nose, not unlike Hopper and Mike have done plenty of times. She leans into the gesture, warm and comforting.

She cries the whole bus ride further into Chicago, half-wishing for more time when it’s rolling into the newest station, where she just _sits_ for a while, hands in her lap.

 

**IF SHE STAYS IN CHICAGO, GO[HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787788/chapters/41968586)**

**IF SHE GOES BACK TO HAWKINS, GO[HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787788/chapters/41968724#workskin)**


	9. In Your Eyes

She can’t quite explain it, but she just feels this _pull_ —almost like her body is doing more of the decision-making than her brain is—and suddenly she’s inching closer towards the voices, mean in contrast to the otherwise peaceful trees (she finds that she quite likes nature like this, calm and green rather than the constant onslaught of cold rain on her skin or loud thunder in her ears). She crouches behind a nearby tree right next to the quarry clearing when she hears another, more familiar voice—Dustin.

The scene ahead is startling in a way that she instinctively knows is violence even if it’s different from the way she’s always experienced (or committed, but she tries not to think about those times as much) it. Her eyes almost don’t know where to look—those boys are harassing Dustin, one with a knife, but Mike, too, is in danger. _Mike_.

He’s standing dangerously close to something just _awful_ , she knows. Almost intuitively, because she doesn’t know the full extent of what jumping from that height would do to someone (but it can’t be good, she assumes). All she really knows is that Mike is far too _soft_ for all those hard, sharp edges and she fears what she’d see if she were to be in his position and look down. And the boy on Dustin is saying something about a _den-tist_ and she doesn’t know what that is, but it can’t be good, either, and the situation is getting so intense that it’s as though a match has been tossed on it (she had to light one, once, in the lab, she was practically a baby then).

So, almost without thinking, like an impulse (hm, _strange)_ , she just acts. When the full capacity of her brain catches onto her body’s intentions, she can only concentrate even harder, eyes nearly rolling back in her head and hoping to _anyone out there_ that what she’s doing is enough. She’s done important things, more difficult things, more _strenuous_ things (monsters, gates, _people_ ), but this somehow feels like the most important thing. Maybe ever.

She’s not even able to revel in the relief of knowing that Mike is _safe_ , back on solid ground, not until she knows Dustin is safe, too. And, more importantly, that these boys will never bother them again. So she cracks the one boy’s arm (it’s as easy as blinking) and finally makes herself known, ready to face whatever may meet her. Thankfully, she finds that the mean boys are easy enough to get rid of after that, basically swatting them away like flies with a single word and narrowed glance.

And, though it’s only been a handful days since she first left the cold sterility of the lab and all the _gray, gray, gray_ , and even fewer days since she first knew what it meant to feel _warm_ and _soft_ (she shrugs her shoulder upwards, rubbing her cheek against the soft crewneck material just for good measure), her nights spent in the woods made her realize that something was very, _very_ wrong. She had dreams—that felt so real they scared her, coupled with the wide expanse of the dark outdoors—some of those cold, lonely nights, often featuring indistinguishable creatures and horrible noises and visions all blending together in a dark, damp place (yes, _this place_ she remembers quite well from her days in the bath). Despite the terrorizing homogeneity of them, they all featured certain things she saw with nearly impressive clarity, staying fresh in her mind’s eye—Mike, trying to talk to someone on his supercom, looking distressed in a way that made her want to make him feel better however she could, a small woman making an impassioned plea to a policeman nearly double her size while they both pored over a scattered mess of papers, and, lastly a small boy, closer to her own size, whimpering in the darkness of the secret world she knows too well—and letting her know that something terribly bad is happening, even if it’s not happening right in front of her eyes. And she can’t be 100 percent sure, but she’s pretty confident that if she were to write it all down (with words she doesn’t quite know yet) and trace the stories with her finger, they’ll all lead back to her. So while she isn’t still stuck in the lab, she still feels a bit backed into a corner—though she finds she doesn’t mind it quite as much if these boys are by her side (even if Lucas isn’t here right now).

So it’s with heart heavy with guilt and worry that she approaches Mike and Dustin, but before she’s able to say anything more, before she’s able to even _think,_ everything goes black and the world feels as though it’s slipping from beneath her feet. Her mental trip back to the lab is harrowing, basically an exclamation point punctuating all she’s previously been thinking—everything that those nights in the woods have previously _shown_ her—but, thankfully, it’s short, being pushed aside by a soft hand on her shoulder (okay, it’s actually shaking her a bit, and she thinks there’s a rock pressed right into her ribcage not unlike the lab’s probes, but it’s _still better_ ).

And all she can do is cry. And tell the truth. And hope that they don’t hate her now, don’t treat her the way they did that first night again (though Mike never did, she remembers—how could she ever forget?).

“Mike. I’m sorry,” she sobs, wondering—not for the first time—if life outside the lab is really meant for her.

But Mike doesn’t understand, because he’s _good_ . “ _Sorry_? What are you sorry for?”

“I opened it,” she confesses, not even stopping to wonder if he even knows _what_ she’s talking about. “I’m the monster.”

“No, El,” he insists, seemingly brushing her concerns aside (what she wouldn’t give to be able to do just that). “You’re not the monster, _you saved me_. Do you understand? You saved me.”

And he says it with such _conviction_ and _warmth_ in his eyes (and, well, besides his original “plan,” he hasn’t been wrong yet—but even that she thinks she understands) that she has no choice but to believe him.

Next thing she knows, Mike and Dustin both have their arms around her and it’s the closest thing she’s felt to _home_ in days, more of a testament to those boys and their softness and care than where they actually are (which is quite unremarkable, she realizes, having gotten quite acquainted with it over the past few days—and now that she’s seen Mike throw himself off of it, she’s perfectly content with not seeing the quarry for a long while). Then she’s back on Mike’s bike, a place where she’d felt so foreign mere days ago, but now just feels like she _fits_ , and she’s not sure if that’s because Mike consciously has made space for her or for some other reason entirely (yet another word she doesn’t have).

The ride back to his house is bumpy, crossing rocks and dirt and grass before reaching stable, flat ground, but it only makes her grip his jacket tighter. She’s still feeling a bit woozy, so she’s thankful that she doesn’t have to do much (though she does feel an almost involuntary twitch in her head during a brief moment where they hit a rock at a particular angle and she feels the bike go near-horizontal), but soon enough they’re back anyway and Mike is guiding her back into the basement, back into the room where she first got to put on his warm, soft clothes.

He puts the wet cloth up to her face and it feels shockingly cool, but also undeniably warm in the strangest way. And though he’s a bit frazzled at first—lifting his free hand as if to reach to steady her face, but apparently changing his mind and dropping it to his side—he eventually reaches a soothing rhythm, calming enough that she thinks she could go to sleep, right here.

“There, that’s better,” he nods, placing the cloth back down.

She can’t help but examine Mike’s face in their closeness, shamelessly letting her eyes roam over it, memorizing the spots across his nose, darkness of his eyes, the steady-growing pinkness on his cheeks all making her feel warm, likely a combination of _him_ , the soft clothes she’s in, and the bright light above them in such a small room (with the door cracked, always).

“El?” Mike says, breaking the silence, though his voice is so quiet he may not have broken anything at all (definitely nothing like she broke that boy’s arm, that’s for sure).

“Yes,” El looks at him with wide eyes, and she realizes then that though she hardly knows him, she always wants to know whatever he has to say, whatever he’s _thinking_ (she could probably find out herself, but that doesn’t feel right).

Mike looks like he’s thinking hard before he speaks again. “Um, I’m happy you’re home.”

And there’s the warmth again, radiating through her, rivaling the first real sun she’d ever seen outside Hawkins National Laboratory.

And what she says next is as easy as breathing, as easy as breaking that boy’s arm.

“Me, too.”

 

_**END** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, an ending! Apologies for potentially not doing the scene justice due to my canon divergent tendencies (#oops). Mike will tell El she’s pretty later in this universe, I promise. Use your headcanons, friends.


	10. Sweet Child O' Mine

With a deep breath, she turns towards the footsteps, hoping with everything that she has that she’s making the right decision—and if not, well, she can tell it’s definitely only one set of footsteps, so she can at least snap their neck if need be ( _that’s the spirit_ ). It’s only a handful of cautious steps until she finally comes across what she was edging towards, and the sight causes her breath to catch in her throat.

It’s a man—nearly double her size both in height _and_ width, she thinks—clad in a uniform that reminds her of the lab guards she’d eyed more than once, wondering how easy it would be to get past them (she never had the guts to try until that last day and, well, here she is). It’s not the same one, though, that she knows for sure. _That one_ is burned in her memory, probably forever.

Her eyes finally travel up towards his face and she realizes he looks just as startled as she likely does. His lips are slightly parted in shock and the nearly gray half-circles beneath his eyes look even more pronounced as his wide eyes take in her tiny form. It’s then that his eyes narrow, not in anger (not like _Papa_ ), but in _something else_ , she’s not sure what. He almost looks like when she’s concentrating very hard to crush a can and make Papa proud. She steps back instinctively, snapping a twig and seeming to bring them both back to reality and out of their respective bubbles of terror and confusion.

“Hey,” the man says, his voice rough, but not necessarily unkind. “I’m not gonna hurt you, kid.”

She still doesn’t move an inch 

“You have a name?” He asks.

“E...E-El,” she stammers—she can’t remember the last time she spoke out loud, it’s been days.

The large man lets out a deep breath, a hand pinching the top of his nose before moving to rub it on his beard.

El runs both hands over her head—partially because it’s cold out here with no hair, but also because it’s become a nervous habit since Papa’s lab friends started regularly shaving it all off (for so long now that she’s stopped being afraid of the oncoming _buzz_ ing sound, settling on being more or less just exasperated)—and she sees the man suck in a breath before his face changes yet again. To something _softer_. Not as soft as Mike’s face, but soft in a way she didn’t even know grownups could be. He looks a bit funny—like he’s here, but also somewhere else. 

“When’s the last time you ate?” He finally says.

All El can do is shrug, soft sweatshirt material meeting with the cheek she brushes down against it. The man nods, going to reach for her wrist before she impulsively recoils.

“Alright,” he nods. “That’s alright, kid.”

Instead he simply gestures for her to follow. That, she can do (though she kind of wishes he had a bike).

She’s not sure how long they’re walking in silence, but eventually they reach a clearing, then a few steps further and they’re in front of a small house. _Cabin_ , El learns it’s called when the man speaks again for the first time in what feels like a long time 

“Stay here, kid,” he orders, pointing to the rickety porch steps as he goes inside (doing what, she has no idea, but she does see his hand twitch towards the gun on his belt—this should probably make her nervous. But again, she could hurt him if she needed to...she thinks. He’s pretty big).

Before she can dwell on what he’s doing, he’s back outside, ushering her in. Her nose twitches involuntarily as she takes in the space, throat feeling scratchy in a way she’s never experienced before—the lab was all sterile, sterile, sterile, the smell of chemicals and, on occasion, the sticky sweetness of Coca Cola (which was quickly mopped up and replaced with _clean_ again), and the outdoors could only described as smelling _clear_ (not everything smells pleasant, she learned very quickly, but at least there were _smells_ )—the air feels still and old, but she takes it all in with interest. Anything new is worth consideration, even if it makes her nose itch until she finally sneezes.

“You think you’d want to, uh, stay here...for a while?” The man asks nervously, almost as if he isn’t sure how to talk to her (she doesn’t blame him, but, well, Mike had been pretty good at it and he was just a kid).

“Y-your-” El begins, ignoring his question for now. “Your name. What is it?”

He looks taken aback for a second, almost as if he wasn’t expecting something so _ordinary_ to come out of this clearly very _odd_ girl’s mouth. A sound comes out of his mouth, then, a short mix between a laugh and a sigh.

“You can call me Hopper,” he nods, crouching down to her height in a way that makes his knees _and_ the floorboards creak (and his face scrunches like it hurts, but El pretends not to notice).

“Hop-per?” She looks at him and he simply nods, offering her a tight smile that she eventually, tentatively returns.

He immediately gets to work after that, pushing some boxes that she hears him call “ _junk_ ” aside—he mutters to himself a lot during this process, she notices—and patting the furniture a bit, causing him to recoil and cough. El has been watching with rapt attention so intensely that she almost goes cross-eyed, but this pulls her back into the present, startling her.

He passes her to the kitchen then turns back, almost as an afterthought. “Sorry if I scared you, kid. Water?”

He’s holding a glass of water out to her and she takes it with shaking hands, clinging tightly to it as if he’s just handed her a precious gem.

He gulps his own down in mere seconds, refilling it instantly, while El takes smaller sips. Even this feels like a luxury to her and it’s only after a few minutes of drinking her water with utmost reverence that she realizes Hopper’s eyes are on her and there’s something deep inside them that looks unmistakably sad.

He clears his throat. “You should sit down. Uh, rest.”

“R-rest?” She asks, wide-eyed, both hands still tightly gripping her glass. “Here?”

“I think you should stay here for a while, kid,” he nods. “To stay safe.”

“Safe?” It sounds too good to be true, and it’s nothing like the warm comfort of the basement fort, but she can’t help the desperate edge that creeps into her voice ( _no more running_ ).

“Yeah,” he starts softly before speaking more firmly, as if something otherworldly convinced him mid-thought. “Yes. You’ll be safe here.”

She isn’t sure why he’s doing this—though she suspects it likely has to do with that look in his eyes from a few minutes earlier—but she’s suddenly hit with a wave of exhaustion and feels too tired to question it any further. Instead of speaking, she finally, _finally_ sits down, unable to stop herself from releasing a sigh of relief at the feel of cushion (and, _okay_ , some poke-y springs) beneath her for the first time in days.

Hopper clears his throat, taking a seat in the chair opposite her space on the couch.

“So, El,” he begins and she looks up at him through tired, hazy eyes. “Want to tell me what had you out running through the woods?”

“No,” she says, giving the answer as simply as breathing.

“No?” She thinks he’s raising an eyebrow, but her eyes are closing even more rapidly now.

“No,” she shrugs, and soon enough, her head is gently hitting the arm of the couch.

She wakes up (thankfully) in the same spot, though now there’s a scratchy blanket draped across her lap and most of the “junk” has been cleared into the furthest corner of the room and there’s a small bed (not dissimilar to the one she had in the lab—looks just as uncomfortable, too) sitting next to it. She’s not sure how long she’s been sleeping, but a look out the window tells her it’s dark outside. Hopper is fairly concentrated on sweeping the floor, so this distraction gives her a moment to take the place in, her eyes poring over the entirety of the space (well, from what she can see, anyway—there are a couple closed doors and maintaining the current peacefulness outweighs her curiosity for once).

He places the broom against the wall and appraises the space, nodding, before turning and finally realizing El is awake (she’s been watching him with rapt attention).

“Oh, you’re up,” he says, sounding almost relieved, though El’s not sure why. “You slept for nearly twelve hours, kid.”

_Oh._

“Well, while you were asleep I went to the store and grabbed some food. I, uh, wasn’t sure what you like.”

All she can do is shrug—she doesn’t know what she likes, either.

She follows him to the small kitchen table, circling it with wide eyes at the food spread out, most of which she’s never even seen, not even in books (and _definitely_ not on her own tray in the lab). She takes her time deciding, even though he assures her three minutes into her internal debate—he seems like a restless man, she notices—that she can eat all of it, if she really wants. She reaches for a sandwich, glancing up at him quizzically once she’s holding it between both hands. It takes him a few seconds to understand what she needs. 

“Oh. That’s a cheeseburger,” he nods at it.

“Cheese-burg-er?” She shifts her eyes between him and the food a few times, partially ashamed over how little she knows, but mostly just hungry.

“Here, sit and eat,” Hopper insists, moving most of the food from the table and pulling out a chair which she gingerly takes a seat in.

He sits across from her, alternating between studying his own fingernails and making sure she’s eating (he opted for a liquid dinner instead, it seems). She can tell there are questions on the tip of his tongue—and she wonders why they haven’t all burst out already like Lucas’s and Mike’s and Dustin’s, but maybe that’s just another secret of life she has yet to learn—but he graciously waits.

Cheeseburgers, she decides right then and there, are her favorite food. Well, until _Eggos_.

Hopper asks her if she wants “dessert” and all she can do is cut him with a look, honestly exhausted under the weight of all the words she just _does not know_ , so he decides to simply show instead of tell, offering her a golden-yellow disc that, if she’s being honest, looks more like one of the toys they gave the kittens in the lab ( _don’tthinkaboutthekittens_ ) than a kind of food.

But, _wow_ , food it definitely is. El easily polishes off the whole box, her mind already skipping ahead and wondering what it would be like to have a cheeseburger _between_ two Eggos. As if Hopper can read her mind (she also keeps glancing at the second takeout container on the counter), he laughs before saying “There’s always tomorrow, kid.”

Then she resumes her previous position on the couch—sitting up, this time. She’s a little surprised to find that she’s somehow still tired. Hopper sits across from her again, sighing in a way that makes her feel like she might throw up all the _amazing_ food she just ate.

“Okay, kid,” he says, looking serious. “You don’t have to say anything, I’m just going to ask you some questions—just yes or no.”

She doesn’t know what to say, so she just...doesn’t.

“Are you, uh,” he swallows a sip of his drink (the can says ‘BEER,’ but he makes a face when he sips, so she figures it mustn’t be good. Why would he drink it, then?). “Are you from the Hawkins Lab?”

Now it’s El’s turn to swallow, but she doesn’t have any BEER or even water to chase the dry, sandy taste out of her mouth and throat. She simply nods.

“Bastards,” Hop mutters quietly in a way that makes El unsure if he’s actually speaking to her (but who else would he be speaking to here?). “What would that lab want with a _kid_?”

El’s still not sure if he’s asking her, but she decides to tell him anyway—to _show_ him. She scrunches her nose slightly, warming up, before lifting the can straight out of his hand and floating it right in front of his face.

Hopper leans back in his chair, knuckles white on its arms and eyes wide before groaning. “Well, that explains that.”

And then, just out of curiosity, El floats the can to her lips and—not heeding Hopper’s protests—takes a sip and she’s never regretted something _so_ immediately, involuntarily spitting it right back out and rushing to the sink to put her mouth right under the tap. She hears the nearly-empty can clatter to the ground as she releases her hold on it; she also hears Hopper’s gruff laughter and scowls.

“Sorry kid.” He’s still laughing. “It’s grown-up stuff.”

“ _Gross_.” She’s still scowling.

“Yeah,” he chuckles. “That, too.”

She finally pulls her face out from the sink and sits back on the couch, wrapping the blanket tightly around her shoulders despite how much it itches her neck. Hopper’s eyes go wide at this, as if he’s just realizing something.

“I, uh, found some clothes for you, too,” he coughs, all traces of the previous moment’s levity have been sucked from the room for whatever reason (she’ll later learn it’s because he hadn’t needed to brave the girl’s clothing section of the store for years prior to this, and doing so caused more pain than he was anticipating—and he was already anticipating a lot). 

He hands them over, still with tags—a pair of flannel pajamas, a pair of corduroy pants, and a long-sleeve, floral print shirt (it’s enough, for now)—and she handles them reverently, eyes roving over each item, taking the care to rub each item against her cheek and feel its _softness_ (well, except the corduroys, they kind of hurt, she notes).

“Good thing the giving tree is out at the church this time of year,” he chuckled, but there was still a sadness under it. “Those gossipy old Hawkins ladies would’ve never gotten off my case about this.”

El, of course, has no idea what these words—or even what their concepts, really—mean, so she just stares up at him, her brain vacillating between confusion over his words and downright _gratitude_ . Mike’s clothes—warm and soft—will always be her favorites, but _these_? These are hers and that understanding fills her with such wonder that she could cry, right there.

And, soon enough, she does.

Hopper looks alarmed at first, as she’s not quite able to express what she feels with words, the emotions overflowing like the time she tried to pour all her orange juice into the small paper cup Papa put her pills in. But then she simply grasps his hand tightly, looking up to offer him a teary “thank you.” She gets snot in her mouth, and the salt from her tears burns the cracked skin of her lips, but she doesn’t pay it any mind as she’s looking down at the bundle of clothes in her lap and Hopper is patting her lightly on the back.

She feels a pang in her bladder then, quickly ceasing her tears and causing her to look up at Hopper in alarm.

“You alright?” He asks, concern etched on his face in a way that would make her feel inexplicably warm in any other case, but she can only really focus on not wetting herself, right there on the couch ( _that_ , unfortunately, she’s far too familiar with—and getting punished for it).

“Bathroom,” she blurts, tugging on his hand again, this time with urgency.

“Over here, kid.”

He swiftly leads her the handful of steps to the small, but effective, bathroom, tossing the pair of pajamas in after her. She insists on leaving the door cracked, and once he’s sure she’s alright, he settles back into his designated chair.

“Might as well get changed while you’re in there!” She hears him shout from the other side of the door, muffled as though she’s hearing him through the bath in the lab.

She does as he suggests once she’s done using the bathroom, making sure to fold Mike’s clothes with care.

El’s dozing off almost as soon as she’s back on the couch, and it isn’t until she wakes a handful of hours later that she realizes her last two sleeps passed without any dreams, visions, _nothing_. If only they could all be like this.

“El,” Hopper says, sounding hesitant in a way she isn’t sure she likes. “I need to go for a few days. Someone will stay with you and take care of you while I’m gone.”

“G-go?” El furrows her eyebrows; she’s not sure if she’s ready for someone _new_.

“I have to take care of some things,” he sighs. “But there’s someone I want you to meet.”

El’s hands twitch at her sides, her fight or flight sense already starting to kick in. She isn’t sure how Hopper is so good at detecting this, but he is.

“Kid, relax. She’s good. She won’t hurt you.”

 _Good_. And a _she_? Again, El’s curiosity is outweighing her fear as Hopper opens the door and a third person steps in. The girl doesn’t look as old Hopper, that’s for sure, and her hair is _long_. Pretty. It looks so soft, and something about her already makes El feel at ease, even if she isn’t sure if she trusts her just yet (but, then again, she’s not sure if she trusts Hopper yet, either).

“El, right?” The girl steps forward, fidgeting with the bottom button of her sweater.

El just nods.

“I’m Nancy,” she offers a tight smile, then.

The two stand there in silence, but nothing is going _wrong_ , so it must be good enough for Hopper.

“Alright,” Hopper nods, glancing between the two (who are still standing a good 7 feet apart). “I’m going. Nancy— _no more_ poking around the lab, no telling anyone else about this, and, for the love of god, do _not_ use the phone.”

El feels herself stiffen at the mention of the lab. Is that what’s going on? She’s afraid to find out, afraid what it could possibly mean. Will they find her? _Papa?_  

“You got it, chief,” she nods, a very serious look on her face.

“Thank you,” he sighs. “El, be good.”

All El can do is stare at him blankly—what real trouble can she get into here, anyway? Plus, “be good” always meant something different, back then. It meant _do this right, Eleven_ or _again, Eleven_ or _don’t resist, Eleven_. None of which has happened here (thankfully) so far. Also after everything she’s done, is it even possible for her to be _good_? Or is “not bad” the best she can ever hope to be? She’s afraid to find out the answer.

“So El,” Nancy says, startling El out of her quickly darkening thoughts. “How’s living here with chief Hopper?”

El pauses, hands fidgeting. “N-nice.”

“Yeah? Maybe I could bring some decorations sometime—when you get your own room.”

El bites her lip at this, trying to contain her excitement at the thought, but not wanting to get her hopes up.

“I brought some things,” Nancy turns back towards her bag, placing it on the floor between them.

El slowly edges over.

“I’ve got some music, books, and— _don’t tell Hopper, he told me not to_ —some clothes.”

El’s eyes light up. She’s realized in the past fifteen minutes that Nancy basically embodies everything she wants to be—nice and light and soft—but, before today, never ever knew she could (she still isn’t sure, but at least it feels slightly in her grasp).

“Music first?”

El just shrugs—she doesn’t know music, but is desperate to soak up everything Nancy is willing to tell her like a sponge.

She starts with something called _Madonna_. It’s a little much, at first, but by the time Nancy’s flipping the record on Hopper’s dusty old player, she’s bopping her head.

“You like it?” Nancy smiles, raising her voice over the volume.

El just nods, face splitting into a grin for what feels like the first time _ever_ (she doesn’t even know if she smiled this big when she met _Mike_ , which she still thinks is probably the best thing that ever happened to her, even if it feels so far away now).

“You ever danced before, El?” Nancy asks, crouching a bit until she’s level with her.

After shaking her head, Nancy assures her it’s not hard—there are no rules, really, and there’s _always_ someone worse than you.

“Usually it’s my brother,” she laughs, still bouncing on the balls of her feet which El is trying to mimic. “He has two left feet for sure.”

El feels an involuntary _warmth_ at Nancy’s mention of her brother ( _strange_ ), but she dismisses it, choosing then to look down at her own two feet in confusion. Papa’s friends in the lab had taught her some things, they’d taught her left from right—was it really possible to have _two_ left feet?

Nancy, finally noticing El’s stopped dancing, pauses herself. “Wha- oh! ‘Two left feet’ is just a figure of speech. Like you’re clumsy...or trip a lot, or lose balance. _Especially_ when trying to dance.”

She nods in the slightest understanding, but realizes she’s a bit tired of dancing.

“Let’s eat something, yeah?” Nancy offers, turning off the music. “There’ll be more music tomorrow—we have a few days, after all.”

El is elated over how at calming of a presence Nancy is in the cabin and quickly realizes she’s probably willing to do nearly anything she suggests. Plus, she _is_ actually hungry.

Nancy makes grilled cheese, claiming it’s the only thing she knows how to cook, and El adds yet another food to her ‘like’ category, even if Nancy scrunches her nose when El dips hers in ketchup, just to try it.

El sees Nancy glancing at the clock a few times after lunch, and she feels slight panic sliding up her throat and hopes that she’s not getting tired of her. She remembers all too well what happened when _Papa_ got sick of having her around, and she’s not ready to relive that feeling just yet, even if the outcome may be something different.

“I’ve got an idea,” Nancy brightens, reaching for her bag again. “Fashion show!”

“Fashion show?” The confusion on El’s face must be funny, because Nancy just laughs and pulls some clothes out of the bag.

“Yeah! I’ll put some Madonna back on, you go into the bathroom and try something on, then come out and show it off.”

El’s face doesn’t budge. She isn’t really sure why that’s supposed to be fun, but she’s willing to try it if Nancy is vouching for it.

Soon enough, she realizes that it _is_ fun, and Nancy even joins in eventually, grabbing one of Hopper’s discarded flannels and tossing it around her neck like a scarf.

The rest of the day passes by similarly, and soon enough it’s after dark and El is back on the couch as Nancy reads to her. _Anne of Green Gables_ , she called it. El thinks she likes it, though she also thinks Nancy might have to repeat some parts tomorrow, since she’s half-asleep.

Her dreamless sleeps are over, she unfortunately learns soon enough—well, kind of, anyway. She isn’t too sure if this is a dream. She’s back in her dark, wet place, head already pounding. She knows she’s supposed to be seeing something, but it takes her eyes a bit to adjust like when she’d try to make out the words in her books long after lights-out in the lab. She _hears_ , rather than sees it first. It’s a boy about her size, small and scared. He’s whimpering, but beyond that she hears something even louder, scarier. It’s the monster she’d been forced to visit in the bath time and time again, the one she can never wipe out of her memories no matter how hard she tries. And it’s getting closer.

She looks around, seeking anything in this pseudo-world that could anchor them to a place in the real one. Her eyes land on trees, then rocks, then a few flowers she’d recognize anywhere—she was desperate to pick them, she thought they were so _pretty_ , but she didn’t want to disturb them. She understood what it was like to be scared and confused, plucked right out of where you seemed to belong and thrown into something completely different (she knew this in a lot of different ways, actually). She wants— _needs_ —to warn the boy. But when she reaches for him, he disappears into a cloud of dust, leaving El panting and whimpering and sweating, suddenly back on the lumpy couch in Hopper’s cabin. Nancy seems to be sleeping, too, but there are small sounds coming from her mouth (or nose? She doesn’t know for sure, but it’s certainly strange).

She turns over then, spending the rest of the night staring at loose threads in the back of the couch and hoping that Nancy wakes up soon.

El spends the day on edge despite all the admitted bright spots—Eggos for breakfast, new music after that (Nancy calls it _The Clash_ , and though she admits it’s not her favorite, though she blushes when she mentions that a _friend_ recommended it, El finds that she likes it quite a lot), even more pages of _Anne_. She’s itching for Nancy to go back to sleep in hopes that she can find the boy again. While she feels safe with Nancy in the cabin, there are just some things she feels that deep down she shouldn’t tell, and this is one of them. Even Hopper doesn’t know about this. Neither does _Mike_.

When she rolls over that night, hearing the soft noises coming from Nancy’s nose again, she glances at the time on Hopper’s digital clock. _1-2-4_. It doesn’t really mean anything to her, but she knows it’s night, so she gets up, trying to stay as quiet as she can, scrunching her nose when she steps on a particularly creaky floorboard. Thankfully, Nancy seems to be a heavy sleeper.

She concentrates hard, undoing and redoing all the door’s locks and slipping out, hoping Nancy feels little more than a draft. Once she’s outside, she panics a bit, having been in the cabin for days now. And while Hopper never specifically _told her_ not to go outside, she still has a feeling that he wouldn’t be too happy with her right now—and it’s a thought that weighs her down a bit, the fear of disappointing him, until she remembers the small boy, whimpering and in danger in a place seemingly only _she_ knows how to reach.

She feels somewhat of a _pull_ as she ventures further into the woods, closer to where she knows the tree is with its gaping rift, pulsating with violent, dark energy. When she finally finds it, she heaves an ironic sigh of relief, almost as though potential danger (and nightmare fuel, _can’t forget that_ ) isn’t waiting right inside. El closes her eyes tight, taking a deep breath before pushing in arm- and head-first, her legs following one by one. She feels as though she’s back in the bath again, underwater, but with something more like thick, day-old oatmeal filling her lungs (they fed her that often at the lab, particularly when she misbehaved).

She closes her eyes again, searching for that link, keeping her ears alert for any sounds. No monsters seem to be around (yet), but she’s extremely familiar with just how quickly that can change. She glances down at herself, thankful for the lack of any potential blood and doubly thankful that she borrowed a pair of Hopper’s comically large socks, covering up the cuts and scrapes on her feet from days spent barefoot in the woods.

It takes her longer than she’d like to find him, but there he is. Small—curled up, not unlike her many nights spent in the cold sterility of Hawkins National Lab—clad in ripped, dirty clothes and with shivering limbs. His face looks a bit blue (but, then again, everything looks a bit blue in here). She’s not sure if he’s okay, she really has no way of telling, but she knows she has to act. “ _Be good_ ,” flashes through her mind again.

She tries to shake him awake (or alive? Or anything?), but he doesn’t budge. So instead, she gathers all the organic strength she can muster (not much) combined with her powers (definitely a lot more) and grabs him, lifting him slightly to drag him towards where she knows the real world is waiting.

They—well, mostly her—only make it a few steps before she hears the familiar snarling and sighs in something akin to pure _annoyance_. This, again? Dropping the boy with a little more force than she’d like, she turns, facing the spot where she knows a monster is soon to appear with it’s gaping open mouth and plentiful teeth and impressive height and dripping saliva.

And then its there, and El isn’t sure if it’s fear or anger or something else, but she’s quickly blasting it backwards, one half of her brain focused on the monster and the other zeroing in on hoisting the boy up once again. She knows she doesn’t have the strength to devote 100% to both, and it scares her, but she knows she can’t focus on it if she wants—no _needs_ —them to get out alive.

So she runs, maybe even faster than when she was running from the lab, if it’s even possible. She feels the monster’s hot breath—a stark contrast to the cool resting state of this upside down world—on her back as she shoves the boy through the rift first, thankfully having one small _push_ left in her as she feels the creature start to latch onto her heel.

Once she’s back in the real world, she’s heaving out exhausted breaths, but she doesn’t let herself stop. If she rests, she’ll fall asleep, and this boy isn’t like her, she knows (not with _powers_ , at least, though she can’t deny the strange pull she feels toward him). So she uses whatever she has left in her to drag him back to the cabin with her.

The re-entry (both fortunately and unfortunately) is not as quiet as her exit, and Nancy quickly jumps up, disheveled and scared at the sound of the door opening and wet footsteps and an extra body _plopping_ onto the cabin floor.

“E-el!” Nancy cries out, before her attention falls on their newest guest, her eyes nearly bulging right out of her head. “ _Will?!”_

 “Will,” El marvels under her breath, finally putting a name to the face that’s been haunting her for over 24 hours. 

“D-do you,” Nancy turns to El in a panic, clearly quickly thinking better of it and talking to herself instead. “Think, Nance! What did they teach you in first aid?”

With shaking hands, she begins pressing on the boy’s chest and breathing into his mouth, and El’s not too sure if she’s hurting him, but Papa never really taught El how to help, so she doesn’t intervene.

She nervously paces besides the scene, wanting to do _anything_ to help, but not knowing how in a way that makes it feel like the grilled cheese she ate so long ago is about to come up.

Suddenly, Nancy’s gasps and a choked, startled cry break El out of her worried trance, and the boy is coughing now, rolled over onto his side.

“I need to, uh- I need…” Nancy is _running around like a chicken with her head cut off_ (it’s a funny phrase Hopper explained to her before he left and it makes her feel warm to think about it, even if the situation at hand isn’t so good itself).

She hears a series of taps and beeps coming from across the room (m _orse code_ , Hopper called it, though she doesn’t know what any of it means yet) as she slowly approaches the boy on the floor. El doesn’t know much about the world yet, but she knows he doesn’t look so good.

She’s not sure how much time passes before the door is swinging open, her hand lifting instinctively in startled defense. 

“ _Je_ sus, kid. It’s alright, it’s alright. It’s just me,” Hopper assures her, patting her on the head before passing to assess Will on the floor.

“What happened?” He’s looking at Nancy now.

Nancy opens and closes her mouth a few times as if she’s not sure just how to explain it (and El finally _understands_ something, for once). “It was El. I just woke up to her showing up with him here. A-and then I did CPR.”

“Okay, good, good,” Hopper nods, leaning down to Will and placing his thumb to the side of the boy’s neck. “Look, I gotta get him back home. Not a _word_ of this. Not even to Jonathan. I know you two are... _close_.”

Despite the situation at hand, El notices a blush rising on Nancy’s cheeks. She nods anyway, and Hopper is out the door nearly as soon as he came in, this time holding Will not unlike the times Papa carried her back to her tiny room when she’d been too exhausted from her tests.

It’s at this point that her adrenaline finally runs out and, before she knows it, weakness is taking over her and her legs are giving out. She thinks she feels Nancy’s arms grabbing her before she hits the floor, but she can’t be positive.

 

**GO TO THE NEXT CHAPTER**


	11. I Wanna Dance with Somebody

“El. Kid.” A warm hand is on her shoulder, shaking her, but her sleep is so gloriously dreamless that she doesn’t want to wake, not yet.

But then, with staggering clarity, the events of _who knows how long ago_ come flashing back to the front of her brain, jolting her awake.

“Whoa, whoa.” It’s Hopper, one hand still hovering over her shoulder. “It’s alright. You’re alright.”

“S-safe?” She whimpers.

“Yeah, kid. You’re safe.”

“And t-the…” She trails off before remembering again. “ _Will?_ ”

“Will is back home,” Hopper nods. “With his family.”

“Family?” El’s eyes are huge as she looks up at him and they simply just _stare_ until Hopper eventually looks away, closing his eyes tight and massaging them with his thumb and forefinger. 

“Yep,” he sighs. “His mom and brother.”

It’s silent for a moment while El processes this and she can tell Hopper has a lot on his mind.

“El.” He’s crouching in front of her again. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“I saw him. In a...a _dream_?” She remembers the word she heard in one of Nancy’s songs (where is Nancy now?). “And then I f-found him. Out there.”

“ _Jeeze_ ,” Hopper mutters before continuing. “Out in the woods? All by yourself at night?”

El simply nods. Hopper sighs again (he’s done a lot of that in the few minutes since she’s been awake), eyes looking toward the ceiling—at what, she still hasn’t been able to figure out, despite him doing this often. “Look. No leaving the cabin anymore, okay? It’s dangerous out there.”

“Dangerous?” Her eyes are wide with fear again, a familiar chill down her spine. “Bad men?”

“Bad me-? You mean from _there_? The lab?” Realization dawns on him and El just nods again, gulping. 

“I’m working on that, okay?” He sounds _different_ then, like when Papa would tell someone on the telephone that they _definitely would make contact tomorrow_.

She wants _so desperately_ to believe him. And for now, she thinks, maybe she will. Just for now.

“But in the meantime, we need some rules,” he starts.

Oh, she knows about rules, alright.

So things go on from there—she can’t leave the cabin, has to learn their secret knock, and can only use something called _morse code_ to communicate with him when he’s not there (never, _ever_ the phone).

Nancy comes back with more books and clothes, too, which become a source of comfort for El in the upcoming months, especially since she hasn’t forgotten her few days of true _freedom_ , able to be out in the world and ride bikes with Mike and Dustin and Lucas, even if she only really knew them for a little. She misses them in the same way she misses those birds Papa got once—they weren’t around for a long time, but she found that her heart hurt over the possibilities of what could’ve been if they stayed around (same with the kittens, soft and cuddly, but she doesn’t let herself think about those as much, because she knows where _they_ ended up).

She grows to trust Hopper ( _trust_ , she learned this from the dictionary Nancy brought her), but their cohabitation isn’t without a few bumps. More than a few times, she uses her powers in a _non-Hopper-approved_ way, and there’s also that particularly intense argument when she ultimately breaks two light bulbs and feels so guilty about it that she tries to send herself to bed (yes, she has a bed now) without dinner. The look on Hopper’s face is a hybrid of exasperated and just plain sad when he realizes what she’s doing and tells her that _no, that’s not how we do things here_ and that _no matter what,_ _we still eat together_ (he doesn’t let her have Eggos that night, though, but she does screw in the new lightbulbs he brings home the next day and sweeps up the glass). He teaches her things, too, fixing and creating and heating up food, but also new music (nothing like Nancy’s) and dance moves (she feels a new feeling, then, and later looks it up and realizes it’s called _embarrassment_ ) and stories 

He tries to read to her every night, but as time goes on things get “crazier at work” and she can’t help but feel like she’s hiding something from her, but she _still_ doesn’t know the right words to say to ask, so she keeps quiet, even if she misses her bedtime stories.

 

* * *

 

 

She doesn’t see Nancy again until months later, and she doesn’t realize how much she missed another girly presence (or just another presence, period) in the cabin until she walks through the door behind Hopper without any warning.

“Thanks again for this, Nancy,” Hopper nods. “I owe you.”

“I mean, you’re paying me _and_ taking down the institution that took down my best friend. So I think that should cover it,” Nancy smirks despite the clear gravity of the situation at hand.

“Yeah, well, the bastards have it coming,” Hopper grumbles. “And, hey—no talking to Murray anymore. Only I deal with that quack, you got it?”

“Trust me,” Nancy laughs, dryly. “You do _not_ have to tell me twice.”

Hopper just nods, telling El to be good (he does that every time he leaves, now, and it’s become something that’s _theirs_ and she refuses to let memories of the lab and Papa and monsters ruin it anymore) before he’s out the door. She notices he has two guns on his belt this time, but doesn’t say anything.

“So,” Nancy smiles, pivoting towards El. “I’m gonna be teaching you some things.”

And teach, she does. It’s frustrating for El, at first, just how _much_ there is. She’s not sure why she needs to know all this stuff—math and writing and science and history—but if Nancy thinks she does, well, she’s willing to follow her lead. They have lessons twice a week—Nancy’s mom thinks she’s at her boyfriend’s, but, “ _jokes on her, I don’t even have a boyfriend right now,”_ she tells El, and they both giggle even though El isn’t sure what she’s talking about—and El has homework in between, which she loves despite Nancy scrunching her nose when she talks about it.

The best day of El’s life so far—well, maybe _second-_ best, first being when she burst out of the lab’s doors in the first place—earns that title for two reasons. One, Hopper tells her that it’s finally _done_. Not only are the doors of the lab closed, but Papa is _gone_ (he doesn't explain in what way, but it doesn't matter right now). El doesn’t know what she feels and Hopper doesn’t push her to feel a certain way, which she thinks is nice. She runs to the bathroom, thinking she may throw up the 3 Eggos Nancy gave her for getting all her math problems right, but she doesn’t, opting instead to look at herself in the mirror and run her fingers through her hair, now a bit of a shaggy, slightly curling mess reaching a bit past her ears. She put purple barrettes in this morning.

But anyway, the second reason this day is the second-best day is because Hopper brings home a _television_. And if she liked _books_ , then _wow_ , the TV is even better. Hopper finds out very quickly that he has to make rules for _that_ , too, because El would much, much rather watch _Days of Our Lives_ than write about history, even if it means Nancy might be upset that her homework isn’t done.

It’s a month later—Hopper finally bought a calendar for the cabin, though El had no idea what any of it meant until Nancy started actually marking things on it and crossing off days as they passed—when he sits her down at the table (it’s too early for dinner, so she’s already _intrigued_ ), looking very serious.

“So, Ellie,” he starts, and El involuntarily _warms_ at his use of the nickname he randomly started using one day.

“Yes, Hop?” She grins cheekily up at him with no choice but to employ a nickname of her own.

“You’ve been working with Nancy for a while now, and she says you’re doing pretty well.”

El smiles bashfully at that, looking down at the soy sauce stain on the tabletop from when Hop introduced her to Chinese food (he warned her that it’s _not the best, but the only in Hawkins_ , but it’s not like El would know, anyway, so she loved it).

“While we were closing, uh, the lab. We found some stuff.”

“Stuff?” She perks up, natural curiosity getting the best of her.

“Files, documents. Mostly boring adult stuff,” Hopper shrugs. “But some stuff about _you_ , too. You’re about thirteen years old.”

This means very little to El, except that she knows Nancy is sixteen.

“Y’know what other thirteen year old kids are up to, Ellie?”

She just shrugs, pursing her lips. She could probably hazard a guess, but, well, thinking about it for too long makes her feel a little glum, given that she’s stuck in this cabin, and all.

“They’re in school,” he answers.

“Okay…” El trails off, not without attitude, which makes Hopper both laugh and roll his eyes (yeah, she’s thirteen, alright).

“Think that would be something you’re up for?”

El freezes, heart in her throat. “M-me? In school? With...other kids?”

“I know, I know, it’s a lot,” Hop places a comforting hand over hers on the table. “But I think you have a real shot—it’s May now, admittance exam isn’t until August. With a little elbow grease, you could be starting eighth grade in the fall.”

“In the _fall_ ?” El asks, eyes wide as saucers, not just because, well it’s _school_ with _other kids her age_ , but because that already almost a year since she’s gotten out of the lab (she doesn’t know the exact date of that, though, Hop didn’t have a calendar yet and there wasn’t one in Mike’s basement, either) and _wow_.

“You don’t have to answer right away-” He starts, leaning over to ruffle her hair.

“Yes!” El jumps out of her seat. “Yes. I w-want to go.”

Hopper just smiles. “Alright. Well, I’ll tell Nancy." 

El begins to regret this decision a mere two weeks later. The lessons are _hard_ now, and even though she picks up science and math and _words_ easily, history feels hopeless and actual grammar and English lessons are an uphill battle. Not only that, but El hasn’t been able to keep up with Days of Our Lives, and not knowing what’s happening with Bo and Hope is _killing her_ (it’s just an expression).

Plus the cabin is getting _hot_. El has been able to step outside a few times now, especially since Hopper assures her that she’s really safe. (And, okay, even though the “rule” is that she’s supposed to stay in sight of the cabin, she _maybe_ goes a little further out sometimes, enjoying the calming presence of the woods and dipping her toes into the small stream that passes through it not far from home.) She thought it was just the _warm_ feeling of paternal acceptance she was feeling until she realized that, no, there was actually a sheen of sweat on her forehead. The surrounding trees unfortunately do little to shade them from the creeping spring-into-summer temps, even if there’s a breeze sometimes when she convinces Nancy to have their lessons outside. Nancy has some freckles now, which she claims to hate, but says they’re caused by the sun and all El can think about is that freckled boy she met so long ago who she might as well have met in a dream and she thinks that she wants some spots, too (maybe it’ll help her feel closer to him, somehow).

Something in Nancy seems to break in late June— _finally!_ El thinks, elated that she’s not alone in her feelings of sheer restlessness—and she hops up from her spot at the table (thankfully Hopper’s bought some fans, at least), slapping her hands down in the way that El knows means she’s about to say something.

“Want an ice cream break, El?” Nancy offers, smiling. “We have some at my house, we can finish this lesson there.”

El can’t help but feel nervous. Typically she’d never say no to dessert, and she knows if Hopper was home he’d look at her like she has ten heads. But Nancy’s _house_ ? She knows Nancy is safe and Hop says she’s safe and she can’t even remember the last time she dreamt about Papa it’s been so long (no comment on dreams about _other_ lab-related topics), but still, she’s smart enough to know it’s still a big, scary, dangerous, _foreign_ world out there, even if part of her is itching to experience it.

 

**IF SHE SAYS YES TO ICE CREAM, GO[HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787788/chapters/41968757#workskin)**

**IF SHE SAYS NO TO ICE CREAM, GO[HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787788/chapters/41968802#workskin)**


	12. Karma Chameleon

She assures herself for the third time (pinching herself to stop her from making it a _fourth_ time) that she’d known what she was doing when she chose this. That she _wasn’t_ actually throwing herself to the public school wolves as opposed to the bubble of private school. Ironically enough, public high school in Indianapolis didn’t phase her much. Show up, be invisible, make small talk with her school-friends (not really _friends_ friends), maybe participate in an extracurricular activity or two, then walk out without a scratch. Lather, rinse, repeat. She found it comforting in the ways most things about teendom just _weren’t_.

But this—this actually feels daunting. Not only is she a new girl, she’s a _new_ girl. Starting smack dab in the center of the “best four years of your life” (HA) when 99% of boys have long since left the timid and annoying, but avoidable stage and now behave like straight up sharks. And girls are always a gamble, she’s learned. Some are soft and nice and friendly and invite you to sleepovers under no pretenses while others are catty and like to gossip and aim straight for you during gym class dodgeball for wearing the same shoes that day. And in a town as small as Hawkins, she truly has no idea what the hell to expect.

With a sigh and one last look at her outfit—lucky golden sundress, lucky high tops, new acid wash denim jacket (luck factor TBD), and lavender socks scrunched to uneven heights—she shrugs her featherlight backpack onto her shoulder (right, no books yet) and bounds down the stairs where her dad is already waiting with a shit-eating grin.

“ _Dad_ ,” she groans.

“Looks like you missed breakfast, Cinderella,” he rolls his eyes, but the rest of his face is just amused.

“Guess I should just skip. Can’t have me passing out on my first day,” she shrugs. “Better luck next year.”

“Good one,” he deadpans, ruffling her hair in a way she finds just _infuriating_. “Eggos in the truck.”

She involuntarily brightens at that—some things never change.

She does a good job of ignoring the kids gawking at her anticlimactic exit from a police truck as she makes her way inside, pretending she’s all lithe limbs and confidence when she’d really rather be at home in sweats watching soaps.

“Well Hawkins High, do your worst...I guess,” she mutters at the double doors as kids come and go in all directions, cigarette smoke wafting past her face where an exasperated teacher is definitely sure to follow.

She navigates the hallways unscathed, stopping at three incorrect doorways before finally finding the main office (her dad must have been trolling when he gave her those directions...either that the school _had_ indeed changed since he attended in the Mesozoic Era) and receiving her schedule, locker number, and combo with little fanfare (but an odd look from the receptionist at the mention of her father—she files that away for either blackmail or cringe material later).

As she approaches her locker she finds that it’s already decorated ( _huh, didn’t know Hawkins High had a welcome committee_ )—with a curtain of red hair, that is. Red hair belonging to the girl who is currently pressed up against the locker beside El’s and quite intensely tangled with a boy whose dark skin is a stark contrast against her own porcelain complexion. To be fair, she’s not actually impeding El’s locker, it’s just her hair, which is quite, well, _expressive_.

She gives it a moment before she feels too awkward to keep standing there, blush burning her cheeks in a way that she’s sure could get her sent home if she hauled ass to the nurse’s office _right now_ (which she seriously considers).

She clears her throat one, two, three times to no avail before finally taking a breath and tapping the girl on the shoulder, immediately recoiling as if she’ll be hit or said girl’s hair will ultimately end up possessing Medusa-like qualities. But thankfully neither happens.

“Oh, shit! Lucas.” The words are muffled as their mouths are still vaguely attached and it isn’t until they separate with a wet _smack_ that she sounds truly coherent. She turns to El slightly. “My bad.”

But she doesn’t look sorry at all. And truthfully, El couldn’t blame her. She doesn’t think she’d feel too sorry for that, either. The boy peppers the redhead’s face with kisses before lifting her off her feet in the grand finale—eliciting a squeal from her that, despite El not knowing her at all, sounds uncharacteristic. And if the blush she’s sporting afterward is any indication, El’s right.

“Sorry about that,” she scrunches her nose.

“Don’t be,” El shrugs, finally free to attempt to open her locker. 

She gets it on the second try. Lockers are never as hard as they look in movies, they’re basically all the same (but would they have been different in _private school_?).

“You new?”

“Yep,” she responds with extra emphasis on the P 

“Cool. I’m Max. Max Mayfield,” the girl— _Max—_ sticks her hand out.

“El Hopper,” El returns the gesture, offering a solid handshake before cocking her head in wonder. “Guess they don’t care for alphabetization at this place, huh?”

“Hm?” Max furrows her brows before catching on. “Oh! I’m in honors woodshop—it’s sick. So sometimes I help fix stuff around the school. Kinda bribed them into giving me a good locker for quick getaways on Fridays." 

“Huh,” El muses. “Smart." 

“Thanks. Speaking of smart, that was my boyfriend, Lucas. He’s a _total_ fucking nerd, but also annoyingly in shape. He’s on the track team,” she shrugs as if he’s no big deal and she wasn’t just trying to suck his life essence out through his mouth so she could bottle it forever. 

“Cute,” El simply raises an eyebrow.

“I guess,” Max scrunches her nose again. “What about you, El? Any boys back in...wherever the fuck you’re from?”

She laughs. “Indianapolis. And, uh, no. Definitely not.”

“Well,” Max purses her lips. “Don’t worry, they’ll all catch wind of you soon enough here.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” El rolls her eyes and all Max can offer is a dry laugh, because El is, like, effortlessly beautiful, it’s so annoying, and Max is just thankful she’s never been intimidated by that stuff otherwise she’d probably hate her.

So yeah, El will either be her new best friend and _doomed_ (solely by association) or sucked in by the popular crowd and also _doomed_.

El is trying to muster up the courage to ask if Max and Lucas have any open seats at their lunch table when the homeroom bell rings. _Cool_.

The rest of the morning goes by uneventfully, a few leering looks from boys in the way that teenage boys seem prone to, but no verbal confirmation of whatever the hell they’re thinking so, for that, El is grateful. Small victories.

But then it’s time for lunch and she’s already fretting over where the hell she’s supposed to sit and the fact that she’ll look like a giant loser alone and her dad’s reassurances of _“making friends takes time, Ellie”_ are getting fainter and fainter by the second.

Next thing she knows she’s face-to-face (well, face-to- _chest_ ) with warm fabric and a solid body and books are scattered on the ground and all her brain can register is “ _soft.”_

_Holy shit, did she just say that out loud?_

She did.

To her utter mortification, the beanstalk she seemingly collided into is _helping her pick up her books_ , crouching down in a way that makes her concerned that his legs may snap at the knees.

Then she gets a look at his face and she’s just... _screwed_. Utterly, completely screwed.

 

**IF SHE GETS AWKWARD AND RUNS AWAY, GO[HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787788/chapters/41968877#workskin)**

**IF SHE INTRODUCES HERSELF LIKE A SOCIALLY ADJUSTED MEMBER OF SOCIETY IS SUPPOSED TO (can’t relate), GO[HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787788/chapters/41968928#workskin)**


	13. Rebel Yell

She sighs deeply as she steps off the bus at Winston Prep, half in anticipation and half in generalized anxiety. She smooths out her plaid skirt for the umpteenth time, quickly untucking her matching burgundy polo—which she’d spent approximately 15 minutes tucking and untucking in her mirror this morning—upon seeing virtually every other girl on campus with their shirts out. An utterly annoyed sound comes from behind her and she realizes, _oh yeah_ , she’s still standing in front of the bus steps. The noise-maker in question finally steps past and it turns out to be a freshman who’s basically half her size. _Figures_.

She marches up to the heavy wooden doors, wrenching them open and being eternally grateful that the main office is right there so she doesn’t run the risk of wandering around looking as clueless as she inevitably feels ( _yet_ ). The office is chaotic, to say the least, and it takes about three minutes before the receptionist even looks her way. But when she does, her face is kind.

“What can I help you with, sweetie?”

“I’m El Hopper, Elizabeth Hopper, I mean—it’s, uh, my first day here. Like, ever.” She wants to smack a hand against her forehead.

“Welcome to Winston, _El_ ,” the small woman smiles from her desk before turning to thumb through some papers.

El signs some form she only half-reads then is dismissed with a handful of other things—her schedule, locker number, some club meeting times, a school map (thank god), and so on. And the paper count only increases as the day goes on. It’s not really until lunch that she ends up having a meaningful conversation with anyone other than Ms. Delaney, the school receptionist, but even then she chalks that one up to necessity.

She’s standing in the lunch line—this school’s pamphlets _raved_ about their lunches, she even heard it mentioned at orientation more than once (a fact that, if you ask El, her dad is definitely slightly bitter about due to his own comparative experience with the culinary delights of Hawkins High)—when she and another girl both reach for the last chocolate milk and El’s default reaction is to panic.

 _This is it, El_ , she thinks, _this is when school becomes like TV and you get into a full-blown fight and someone even pulls your whole wig off (wait_ — _you’re not_ wearing _a wig_ ).

But that, thankfully, isn’t what happens at all.

“Oh shit, sorry! It’s totally yours,” the other girl speaks first, lifting her hand from the small carton.

El finally gets a chance to look at her—dirty blond hair, a bit taller than her, and fair skin punctuated with purple eyeshadow—and recognizes her as a girl from homeroom.

“You sure?” She asks, still wholly apprehensive (those summer days spent reading _Love & Power in a World Without Limits _ perhaps all for naught).

“Yeah, for sure. I’m feeling strawberry milk anyway,” the girl shrugs, casually picking up the pink carton that matches her nail polish perfectly.

El wishes she could do _anything_ in life that seamlessly, particularly making decisions.

“Oh, you match!” She points out before she can stop herself, immediately wondering what the best angle is to stuff your own foot firmly in your mouth.

“Shit, you’re right,” the girl answers, and whether she’s genuinely amused or just playing along, El neither knows nor cares. “What’s your name, by the way? You’re new, right?”

“Sure am,” El raises a brow. “I’m El Hopper.”

“Krista Thompson,” the other girl smiles warmly.

The whole time they’ve been casually meandering through the cafeteria, stopping to pay and thank the lunch lady before walking off with their full trays. El’s basically been on autopilot until she realizes that she’s currently standing in front of an already half-full table.

“Oh, uh-” she starts, her hands tightening on her tray.

“Aren’t you gonna sit down?” Krista raises an eyebrow as she slides into her seat.

And just like that, El has a lunch table to sit at. _Yet another thing that’s unlike TV_ , she notes.

The other four girls look at her with varying levels of interest—one not even looking at all, her face firmly glued to the issue of _Seventeen_ in front of her.

“Hi, um, I’m El. El Hopper,” she introduces in an attempt to power through her default timidity.

The rest of the table takes turns with their own intros—Josie with the short black bob and severely lined eyes, Tish with caramel skin and wild, enviable curls, Meg-Anne ( _“Idunno why my parents couldn’t just spell Megan like normal human beings”)_ with auburn hair and possibly one-too-many barrettes, and Ashley, who had to be coaxed out of her magazine with a kick under the table from Krista—and El feels inexplicably _warm_ . These girls are genuinely _nice_ , talking about normal topics she can actually weigh in on and not treating her like she’s a total space cadet (well, besides Ashley, who immediately goes back to her teen mag once introduction hour is over, so El doesn’t take it personally).

“So—strategy for the involvement fair later?” Tish drops her hands on the table once she’s finished her sandwich, leaning in in anticipation and all-business.

“I think I’ll start with sports first, for sure,” Krista purses her lips in genuine thought.

Josie is the next to speak. “Def tackling the art orgs, I actually want to be on newspaper this year, plus they always have _bitchin’_ snacks.”

Meg-Anne picks the academic clubs after that, and soon they’re all (again, with the exception of Ashley) glancing in El’s direction quizzically.

She laughs nervously. “Uh, hold on...can we, uh, back it up a sec? The involvement _what_?”

Tish and Krista look at each other, nodding in immediate understanding. _Oh right, new girl._

“Winston always holds the involvement fair on the first day, mainly because the teachers are too lazy to do anything so it gets them off the hook for the later periods and they can smoke in the parking lot, but also to give everyone a chance to see what clubs and shit they might be interested in,” Meg-Anne explains.

“It’s cool, I guess,” Josie shrugs. “But probably 97% of the reason we attend is actually just for the free snacks and stuff.”

El shrugs. “That does sound cool.” _Not like she has a choice, anyway, it’s just what everyone_ does.

“Sticking with me is your best bet, the shit is honestly kind of a sensory overload. Maybe you can tackle your own wing next year,” Krista laughs.

El finds herself laughing, too, and not out of nervousness or embarrassment or 99% of the other vaguely horrific potential reasons she was expecting to laugh on her first day. Despite spending most of her day—including this lunch period—nearly on the outskirts of everything, at this moment she feels like she could _fly_. She actually has _friends_. Maybe. Hopefully.

The bell rings and it’s all shuffling chairs and scattering to toss out the last of their trash, which is why El almost jumps out of her skin when she hears Ashley’s voice for the first time in over thirty minutes.

“Hey El,” she says casually, glancing between El and her coveted magazine. “Have you ever considered crimping your hair? I feel like you could totally pull it off. 

She gives her no time to respond—because she’s off to her next class just as quickly as she asked—so El is just equal parts bewildered and also _elated_ , because it’s practically a scientific fact that girl-to-girl compliments feel _way_ better than compliments from guys (not to mention the _creative_ language dudes typically like to pepper it with).

El’s class passes with little excitement, just going over the syllabus and receiving textbooks like the rest of them, and next thing she knows, the bell is ringing and it’s time for the involvement fair and she’s practically vibrating with nervous energy. By a stroke of luck (or maybe not, all of the juniors’ lockers are generally in the same area), she sees Krista in the hall, the girl easily matching her pace and waiting while El puts her books away.

“You ready for this?” Krista raises a single brow.

El sighs. “Guess I have to be.”

And it turns out, Krista and the girls were not lying. The whole thing is a sensory overload, looking kind of like a carnival and sorority house (well, from what she’s seen of them in movies) had a baby and then a job interview threw up on top of it. Following Krista’s lead, El grabs one (okay, usually _two_ ) of everything—snacks, flyers, you name it—and does linger at some tables a bit longer than others (debate team, dance club, and yearbook, specifically), but ultimately comes out unscathed. The final bell rings and it takes a bit longer for Josie, Tish, Meg-Anne, and Ashley to meet back up with them due to the sheer volume of teenage girls attempting to stampede through a single pair of double doors, but they get there eventually.

“Solid haul this year, ladies,” Josie appraises everyone’s bundles with an approving eye before turning to stuff her own in her backpack. “Welp, duty calls. See y’all tomorrow?”

They all say their goodbyes as they go their separate ways, El and Krista still walking in the same direction.

“Josie has a job at that ear piercing place at the mall,” Krista explains her earlier departure. “It’s pretty sick.”

El remembers something, then. “Speaking of ear piercings— _kind of_ —how do you get away with the eye shadow? Isn’t that against uniform code?”

Krista scoffs. “Oh, I mean, first day is low risk. Though, to be fair, the school’s level of giving a shit just seems to decrease as the year goes on. Just wait til October 22nd.”

“What’s October 22nd?” El doesn’t know if she should be scared or excited.

“Just the day that Miss Michaels officially stops caring about the gym uniform. Happens like clockwork every year, there’s a party and everything—aka it’s just a handful of seniors chain smoking and sharing a single beer in the woods behind the school,” Krista shrugs.

It’s ridiculous, quite frankly, but (yet again) El feels elated at feeling like she’s _involved_.

Her elation rapidly depreciates, however, when she remembers she has to take the bus. But whatever, the day’s still a net positive, she thinks.

She gets home—having spent the entire ride lost in thought and ignoring the freshman antics surrounding her—and Hop is already at the house, pretending to watch a rerun of some baseball game, but really just itching to know how her day went. The private school world is so foreign to him (to both of them, really, until today) that El _knows_ he’s begging to hear all its secrets and gossip about it with her like a little Hawkins church lady. He’s so transparent sometimes. _Dads_.

She drops all of her papers down on the kitchen table—both official office forms and her bounty from the involvement fair—and her dad’s eyes grow comically wide 

“Sheesh, any trees left?”

“Probably not,” El shrugs.

“So, how’d it go?”

“Good!” El assures him, a slow-growing smile taking its place on her lips. “Really good, actually.”

If she notices the small sigh of relief from him, she doesn’t acknowledge it.

“That’s great, kid,” He ruffles her hair, and now that there’s no pressure of _teen girls_ and _uniform codes_ she doesn’t even fight him on it.

“So, uh, what’s all this, then?" 

“Right. So, I’ve been thinking,” she starts.

 

**IF SHE CHOOSES TO STICK WITH SCHOOL ACTIVITIES, GO[HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787788/chapters/41969018)**

**IF SHE CHOOSES TO TAKE A JOB, GO[HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787788/chapters/41968964#workskin)**


	14. Don't You (Forget About Me)

Once she gets up, she wanders, and, okay, she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t a _little_ excited about the prospect of being in such a big, bustling city, even if it is kind of full of mouthbreathers. She’s been walking around for at least thirty minutes when she sees it, totally by accident, really.

Radio Shack.

It’s like finding water in a desert—she’s drained, both emotionally and physically, body and brain and heart all sore. So, while she _could_ just try to conjure up a picture of Kali in the Void (she’s practiced enough that she no longer needs to rely on Supercoms or TVs), this makes it much, _much_ easier. She nearly sighs in relief as she slides through the door and slinks towards the back of the store, undoubtedly looking super suspicious.

But she’s graciously able to clear her mind within minutes, trying to focus only on the image of the girl she saw in her dream all those nights ago. And there she is—in a park? Or at least that’s what it looks like. She looks almost childlike in this scenario, sitting on a swing. But the light pumping of her legs does little to erase the bags under her eyes or worry lines on her face (El knows those well).

Once she’s out of the Void, she even counts her money and buys a little something for Mike—it’s silly, really, just a cord he’d mentioned losing in passing, she doesn’t even know what it’s actually for.

And it turns out that finding her sister in the physical world isn’t hard at all. Like Mike (and Will, she thinks), she seems to just be pulled to her—though, unlike Mike, it’s not nearly as strong. But it’s enough.

She’s not too sure of her approach—the only way she’s really met people before is by them finding her unconscious, or accidentally coming across them in the woods, or slamming right into them in the school hallway—so she spends almost an embarrassing amount of time just _watching_. It’s not like she’s hiding, she’s out in the open, at a bench maybe 15 feet away.

“Eight!” It’s out of her mouth before she even realizes it, and she slaps a hand over the offending orifice and just _waits_. Her sister stops, still as a deer that knows it’s as good as coyote food, before turning harshly to her, a fist clenched at her side.

“ _What_ did you just call me?” She hisses.

She’s right in front of El, now, and while this isn’t how she wanted this to go, not even close, she also can’t help the slight relief that washes over her, confirming that she _wasn’t_ as crazy as she felt. So, in that moment, all she can do is turn her arm, exposing the 011 tattoo still dark as ever on her own wrist.

“Y-you-” Eight just gapes, spluttering. “How?”

“Sister,” El whispers, now grabbing onto where she knows the girl’s own tattoo lies under her sleeve.

“What are you doing?” She snaps out of her stupor, slapping El’s hand away. “Are you trying to get us _killed_?”

“No, it’s okay, it’s-” El huffs, frustrated. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

Eight turns wordlessly, but she keeps a loose hand on El’s wrist the whole time, dragging her along. El is absolutely certain she has no idea how to ever get back to the bus station (not to mention absolutely _grateful_ that she has psionic powers) by the time her sister is finally stopping at their destination—a nondescript, rundown warehouse. Despite what the big, vacant area seems to be lacking in terms of furniture and comfort, she does seem to have made it her own, which speaks to her in a weird way (she was the girl who was able to find a home in a basement blanket fort, so, go figure).

“What’s your name?” She asks. “You look so... _normal_ , I can’t imagine you would’ve kept it.”

“Um,” El feels shy, all of a sudden, because, yeah, she’s right. “El, actually. But also Jane.”

“I’ll stick with Jane,” she nods, _almost_ smirking. “I’m Kali.”

“Nothing like eight, then,” El laughs nervously.

“Nope,” her sister responds, accentuating the P. “So, you talking?”

“Oh, right,” she tries not to wince at her sister’s rough demeanor, because deep down she really and truly _understands_ . “So, Pa- _Brenner_ is dead.”

Kali’s eyes go wide as saucers. “H-he’s _dead_?”

“I saw it myself. I _know_ .” And _god_ , does she, deep in her bones.

El shares the same papers with her and is glad she made copies, even if it meant having to be extra sneaky in the library on Thursday and bribing Alexis, the library assistant, with a family-sized bag of Reese’s Pieces (not to mention listen to her wax poetic about _E.T._ for far too long, ugh _)_.

“Wow,” Kali gasps, once she’s had ample time to read them all—she actually pored over every sentence, hanging on every word, rather than just skimming like Aunt Becky had. “This is-”

“I know.”

“What can you _do_?” Kali asks with wide eyes.

El smirks at this, it’s involuntary, really. She sees a flowerless vase across the room and sets her sights on it, barely even having to lift her hand to toss it into the nearest wall, shattering the thing into tiny pieces.

“A vase? That’s all? Those normies really did soften you,” Kali smirks, crossing her arms.

“Hey!” El cries, affronted on both her and those ‘normies'’ behalf. “I can do more than that I just...don’t. Not anymore. Anyway, what can _you_ do?”

It’s like El blinks and, next thing she knows, she’s surrounded by a swarm of vibrant butterflies, all circling her head with abandon. But when she swipes at one of them, much like in the Void, they disappear.

Kali winks. “Kept it simple for you, too.”

“That’s _simple_?” El scoffs. “That’s like...like _magic_.”

“Magic?” Kali crosses her arms. “What do you call what _you_ do then?”

El shrugs—it’s become such an accepted part of her by her inner circle that she hasn’t had to talk about it in a long, long time.

“Just...me, I guess. A defect, maybe,” she grumbles, mirroring Kali’s stance 

“A _defect_?” Kali questions with exasperation. “Jane, you have a gift. Invaluable, really.”

“A gift?” El almost rolls her eyes, considering all the past _destruction_ that’s come as a result of her powers (well, it has helped Hop with some home improvements a time or two, so maybe it was good in _that_ regard…).

“Yes!” Kali cries, excitement growing in her voice. “In fact, I think you and I would make a magnificent team.”

El’s gotten progressively pretty smart over the years, but she’s 100% lost now, undoubtedly.

“...With what?”

With a flourish, Kali pulls something out of her pocket—not an illusion this time, a real, solid thing. It’s a photograph.

“You recognize this man?”

El squints—the photo appears to be ripped in half, and all there is is one man, clad in a suit under a lab coat, not unlike Papa’s regular uniform. He looks unremarkable, just pale skin and glasses and light brown hair. Does he look like someone she could’ve seen? Sure. But so many of those men blended together, after all (so many still do in the real world, to be honest). She shrugs.

“Maybe? I mean, it’s possible…” She trails off.

“That’s fair,” Kali nods. “This man—this _fucker_ —is the one who regularly ran _my_ tests. When Brenner wasn’t available, that is. Had all his evilness, but absolutely _none_ of his charisma. Pity, really.”

El feels anger growing inside of her at the reminder that the man hurt people _besides_ her. If it had only been her, it would hurt, but she could handle it. But others? It makes her blood boil.

“So,” El gulps. “What about him?”

Kali looks at her apprehensively in a way that automatically makes her nervous. “You can get into the...the Void, right?”

“Um, yes.”

“Oh thank god,” she sighs in relief before continuing. “It’s been so hard to find him on my own lately, I think with the two of us, it should be fairly easy.”

“Easy?” El starts nervously chipping at her fingernails.

“We can’t let him get away with what he did, Jane,” Kali says resolutely, stilling El’s hands and taking them tightly within her own. “Don’t you want that? It’s what we deserve. It’s what _he_ deserves.”

“Kali, I…” El shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

Kali sighs, dropping her hands, then. “I knew it. I knew they’d softened you.”

“Hey!” El calls out in a way that makes the furniture float off the ground, only a few inches for half a second, before dropping back down with a pronounced _thud_ . “I’m strong. I’m a fighter. I’ve _killed_.”

“So then what’s holding you back?” Kali turns back to her now, looking more desperate than anything else.

El sighs, wiping a tired hand over her face. “I don’t know…”

She wants to believe that it’s because she’s _good_ now, that she doesn’t ever want to hurt again. But can she say that with certainty? She’s not too sure.

The sun is setting through the huge ceiling windows, casting unique shadows over the vast space, and El realizes that Mike is likely already setting up a search party in Hawkins by now. And _Hop?_ Well, she already knows that she’s _so_ grounded when she gets home. She considers trying to find them in the Void, but she knows it’ll hurt too much (not to mention the fact that she kind of has a death mission she needs to diffuse right now…). 

She’s not sure how long she’s been lost inside her own head—or how much of her thoughts she verbalized without realizing—when she realizes her sister looking at her expectantly.

“Well?” She starts up again, hands on hips.

“Kali, I don’t think this is such a good idea…”

“Jane, _please_. I _need_ this,” Kali practically begs, but her voice is still fierce as ever. “This man destroyed my life. _He_ is the reason I’m living in this dump. I can’t move on. Not until I do this.”

“But the lab...it’s _closed,_ Kali.” El realizes she’s using that grounding technique Mike often employs with her where he uses her name liberally in sentences. “Brenner is go-... _dead_. You know this.”

“Only as of an hour ago,” her sister mutters, dejected.

“How long have you been at this?” El asks, then, feeling a little queasy.

In a far corner, she can make out a corkboard with more pictures like the one Kali just showed her and it does little to quell her nausea.

Kali sighs, and if El knows anything about anything, she knows she’s close to breaking (probably for the first time in a long time, if her own experience has taught her anything).

“What else am I supposed to do?” She shrugs, looking up at the ceiling. “I’m a weapon. I was made for this. It’s all I’m good for.”

“Kali. No you’re- you’re _not_ ,” El pleads, begging the older girl to understand.

“I am,” she says, resolute. “I don’t have _people_ , the way you do. Not anymore.”

It’s then that El realizes the telltale signs of other life (or past life) in the space. Discarded clothes that definitely wouldn’t fit her sister, another makeshift bed, a table and some chairs and multiple disgusting, crusty place settings.

“Wh-what happened?”

“They _died_ , too. Or some of them, anyway,” she shrugs. “For others I guess I wasn’t worth sticking around.”

“Who?”

“My old family,” she scoffs. “Or whatever you’d call it. There were five of us—Funshine, Dottie, Axel, Mick, and me. All rejects.”

“Like...like-” El’s speaking before she even realizes it.

“No,” Kali shakes her head. “Not like us. Just...rejects from society, I guess. Dropouts, runaways, criminals, the whole nine. Ironically I felt safer with them than I ever did in the lab. The pigs were always on our tail. We’d been doing a good job of keeping them off, though. And then shit hit the fan. Of course Dottie was the one who got killed. It’s always the good ones, well, ‘good’ by my definition, I guess. She was too good for this world, y’know?”

El nods, mind immediately flitting to her too-tall, adorably awkward, annoyingly stubborn, and aggressively overprotective boyfriend. She does know.

She continues. “Dottie got killed, Mick and Funshine got locked up, and Axel, well...he just fucking _bailed_. They were the ones who helped me. They were the first people who ever _wanted_ to.”

“How did _you_ get away?” El asks, wide-eyed and curious.

At that, Kali just gives her a flat, _‘I-can-literally-make-illusions’_ look, and El isn’t sure when it starts, but suddenly they’re both laughing so hard that their cheeks and stomachs and lungs hurt at the absurdity of it all. It’s a heavy laughter, not light or airy like when she and Mike are cuddled on the couch watching dumb cartoons, but feels better than crying, for what it’s worth.

Once they’ve calmed down, El steps forward, grabbing one of Kali’s hands in her own and digging deep to remember some of Dr. Briggs’ wisdom.

“Kali, I think there’s hope for you,” she nods, actually fully believing it, picturing how easily this could’ve been _her_ life. “You’re not just a weapon. I think- I think you just need people around to be _nice_.”

“ _Nice_ ?” Kali scoffs, still hanging on El’s words despite her disbelief. “Just someone being _nice_?”

She feels a sharp, stabbing pain in her heart over the realization that Kali is someone who’s only seen and experienced the ugliness the world has to offer, not only just inside the lab, but outside of it, too, among “regular” people. She thinks back to herself—a small, sad, dangerous girl—mere years ago and the boy who took her in and was nothing more than just _nice_ to her, offering bare minimum comforts (okay, housing a stranger in your basement is a bit more than “bare minimum”), but changing her life all the same.

She shrugs. “Won’t know until you try, eh?”

And then Kali’s _sobbing_ , and El’s glad that she has powers because her sister is basically dead weight as she slumps against her while she cries, and all El wants is to take her hurt out and replace it with something better, but no magic optical illusions or floating vases or anything else can replace the impact of just _time_.

They fall asleep eventually, hands clasped, and for the second time in 24 hours, El understands a new definition of _family_. Hers is this patchwork kind of thing, but she wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Which is where it gets complicated.

It’s 8 am when she wakes up (still wearing Mike’s watch, though it’s been upgraded—she made him wear it for a week first before she agreed to put it on) wondering what exactly she’s supposed to do. She can’t just _leave_ her sister here. But also she’s pretty sure Hop has definitely moved from the “you’re grounded ‘til next week” phase to “you’re grounded ‘til you’re 50” by now. 

“Kali,” she shakes her sister’s shoulder. “Kal.”

“Mrpgh,” Kali’s grumbles (including something that suspiciously sounds like _“fuck off”_ ) are muffled as she shoves her face further in the pillow in an attempt to hide from the sunlight.

“What are you doing today?”

Kali huffs, finally flopping onto her back and cracking an eye open. “No idea. I was gonna try to do surveillance on that guy, but now that I have someone who wants me to be _good_ , and all…”

El rolls her eyes. “Why, um...why don’t you come back with me?”

“You’re leaving?” Kali sits up so fast then that she gets dizzy, if how she immediately slaps her hand to her forehead is any indication.

“I mean,” El shrugs. “I have school...and _people_ , I-" 

“Please don’t leave,” Kali begs—genuinely, now—and despite all that’s happened in the past however many hours, she thinks _this_ is when Kali looks the most genuinely vulnerable.

El sighs. She can’t just give up on her. Where would she be if Mike had given up on her? And the boys? And Hopper? Even Max, she totally could’ve punched her in the face for bumping into her on that first day, but she _didn’t_.

“Okay,” she sighs, easily relenting, because this is her _sister_ and she _needs_ her and it’s not even an optical illusion, or anything. “For today.”

But then today becomes tomorrow, too. Because she has a dream about mama for the first time _ever_ and when she goes over again (Aunt Becky is surprisingly happy about this even despite the disparaging looks she gives Kali’s outfit and hair choices) she brings her sister with her and that experience is so uniquely _bizarre_ that it takes her a whole other day to process. Turns out her mom _recognized_ Kali in the Void, memories of the two of them flashing in her subconsciousness even in her vegetative state in a way that had both of the young girls in tears.

 

* * *

 

 

So those days turn into a year, almost without realizing it. Because Kali doesn’t just need El, they need _each other_ , even if it hurts so bad. She visits her mom and Becky every Monday and Mike and Hop in the Void every Friday—well, now she only visits them once a month after Kali came into her sobbing over her visit with Mike for the third week in a row and that was their compromise. At some point they find out that the lab has been leveled, demolished. _Good._

They make do, somehow, against all odds. Becky gives them money sometimes, in addition to some of her and mama’s old clothes which keep them afloat for a while. And it’s the following May when they realize they can’t possibly go on any longer without jobs—Becky is content to give them money forever, because, well, it was a payoff from the lab, and all, but they’re _bored_. And when El suggests going back to Hawkins for even a second, Kali immediately vetoes it. She’s got a point, El can’t really imagine Kali—half-shaved head, all black clothes, crude and standoffish demeanor—in as slow a town as Hawkins (though she did learn from the Void that they finally got a McDonald’s). Plus her own martyr complex is always lurking around the corner, ready to come out and remind her that she’s undoubtedly caused the people who love her so much harm and hurt and irreversible pain that maybe they’ve at least been able to get over it by now and are all better off without her.

She considers leaving and going back more often than she doesn't, but she also knows she  _can't_ , not technically, because Kali has taken to drinking some nights when the memories get particularly hard (PTSD, she remembers Dr Briggs explaining it to both her  _and_ Hop—for different reasons, obviously). And judging by how she gets on  _those_ nights, she's far too scared to think of what would happen if she were gone for good.

But for better or for worse, El ends up at a diner and Kali at a laundromat, both getting paid under the table (Kali, because she doesn’t have any legal identification; El, because her father is a cop). Thanks to this, they’re able to decorate their “apartment” to resemble something of a home—El takes on most of this, much to Kali’s dismay, because it’s definitely more fluffy and girly than not, save for the large t-rex painting that she forces her to carry home from the secondhand store (" _Kal, feel free to add your own touches any minute now if you’re gonna keep complaining,”_ she always says, sometimes laughing, other times not so much).

By the time mid-summer rolls around, El is beyond thankful that she’s gotten the hang of serving, because their daily patronage has nearly doubled since college students are now moving into town. The added money is nice, but it’s 90% of the time just a nuisance, mainly because some kids are shitty tippers and also she’s subjected to _way_ more uninvited propositions from guys stumbling in after enough beers to put her dad to shame.

She also notices that her most recent visits to Mike haven’t found him in anywhere she’s seen before. She wonders— _obsessively_ , if you ask Kali—where he could be. Starting a new life that she’ll never fully know about? New girlfriend’s house? Her stomach lurches at the thought. From that point forward, she resolves to never look for him in the Void again, assuming that he’s declared in fewer words that he _finally_ just wants to remove himself from it all. Somewhere in the back of her mind she’d always figured this day would come eventually, but nothing, _nothing_ could ever prepare her for just how bad it hurts.

It’s a late Thursday night in early August when the bell on the door of the diner chimes and El has to restrain herself from barking that they’re closed despite what the 5x7 neon “24/7” sign would have you believe. To say it had been a long day would be an understatement—”can I speak to the manager” types (jokes on you, ladies, in a place like this, she might as well be the manager), rowdy drunk college boys, two preteens who dined and dashed, and a table of 12 still on a high from whatever community theater matinee they’d performed in ( _Hair_ , if the songs they insisted on singing in the crowded diner were any indication).

But when she looks over at the door, she sees none other than Michael Wheeler— _her_ Michael Wheeler (or at least he _was_ )—standing there like some sort of mirage. Quite frankly, he looks about as shitty as she feels, but she doesn’t _care_. She curses at how her heart absolutely leaps at the sight of him, something that she hasn’t felt in so long that it almost feels like she’s having a heart attack.

A hand taps her on the shoulder and she nearly jumps out of her skin.

“Table seven, honey,” Louise informs her before smirking (clearly mistaking her staring for just thinking he was cute, rather than the absolute love of her life who she abandoned in their bumblefuck hometown two years ago despite the fact that he’d do _anything_ for her).

Cool. This should be fine.

“H-hello?” She squeaks, all professionalism out the window when her number one focus is just on continuing to _breathe_.

Ironically enough, she’s using the techniques he taught her.

“ _Christ_ ,” Mike hisses once he’s finally looked up for his menu and _sees_ her. “E-El? Wha-...is this _real_? Or a dream?”

El almost blushes until she remembers that nightmares are technically dreams, too.

“It’s real,” she nods, barely over a whisper.

“Can we, uh, talk? _Please_?” She doesn’t even try to be subtle in her desperation. “I can take a 15 after, uh, you eat.”

Now that she’s been in his orbit again, there’s no such thing as close enough. It’s almost embarrassing, she thinks, how immediately she’s drawn to him and wants to just cling to him forever (only ‘embarrassing’ because she doesn’t know how _he_ feels about it, though and, judging by his demeanor, it’s likely not the same). He hasn’t said anything yet and is still just staring up at her, bags under his eyes and gauntness in his cheeks especially prominent under the glow of fluorescent diner lights. So she speaks again.

“Or anytime, really,” she’s one octave away from nervous rambling. “I work the same shift every other day basically, it’s not much, but something, yeah?”

He clears his throat then, looking back down at his menu for a second before shifting his eyes back to her—but they land on her notepad rather than her eyes or even face and she feels like she could shrivel up and die.

“I’ll take a coffee, please. Just leave the pot, if you can,” he sighs. “And some eggs with bacon and toast. And we can meet after, sure, once I’ve paid.”

“Oh!” El shakes her head, pleasantly surprised. “Okay, yeah. Uh, coming right up...your food, I mean.”

It’s silly how his mere presence is able to reduce her to _this_ , especially since she didn’t even need to be shy or embarrassed or nervous before. The sensation feels foreign, but not wholly unpleasant in some weird, kismetic way.

She’s not sure if he chuckles or scoffs as she walks away, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s actually calling after her within seconds.

“Um, excuse me,” he says, not really having to project over the sheer emptiness of the place.

“Hm?” She turns, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“You didn’t even ask how I wanted my eggs.”

At this, she lets some of their own dynamic slip through before she can even help it, rolling her eyes. “I remember.”

He’s silent after that. For the rest of his meal, really. But it’s okay, because they’re meeting after.

Except he doesn’t actually stay. There’s a large tip (like, _4 times his bill_ large) and a scrawled phone number left on his coffee-stained placemat, but no him waiting outside. She nearly cries, right then and there; she manages to hold it in, but once she’s home, all bets are off (until Kali complains that she won’t stop levitating the furniture, that is).

Well, now she knows where he was in the Void, she guesses. Fucking _Chicago_ . In some case of wild, painful cosmic irony. For a split second, her hopeful, _dumb_ heart had let her entertain the thought that maybe, just maybe, he was there to try to find her. (Hop must’ve at least considered that she had gone there, he did share the information about her mom, after all.) That the _pull_ she’d always felt among them lived in him, too. But he didn’t show.

She plays around with the phone number, crumpling and un-crumpling the small paper strip between her palms, scrutinizing it until she’s committed it to memory. But she doesn’t use it. She refuses to _bother_ him if he’s trying to make a clean break. And, well, she doubts he’ll ever come to her diner again.

“Jane?” Kali asks, approaching her with caution after taking in the sight of her (smudged mascara and eyeliner tracked all over her cheeks, fresh tears still glossy on her face, whimpering and staring blankly up at the ceiling). “What did I just walk into?”

“Mike,” she breathes out in pure anguish. 

“Hm?” Kali asks, eyebrows climbing to the middle of her forehead. “I don’t see him anywhere.”

“Not here,” El scowls, lightly kicking her with the toe of her Doc Marten (Kali got them secondhand as a 17th birthday gift).

“Hey!” Kali cries, rubbing the spot on her skin despite it definitely not hurting. “Violence is not the answer, woman.”

El scoffs, rolling onto her side. “Rich coming from you.”

“Mmmm nope,” Kali objects, sitting down next to her. “You don’t get to shut down before explaining. You only bring up my _past_ when you’re really outta wack. You haven’t done that since Christmas.”

“He came into the diner,” she groans, facing the ceiling once again and looking absolutely _tortured_.

Kali gasps. “On purpose?”

“Uh, for food, yeah,” El rolls her eyes. 

“Well, idunno,” Kali mirrors the expression, rolling her own eyes in return. “I’ve been hearing you wax poetic about your _‘soul bond’_ with him for the past two years up until as recently as three days ago, so maybe there was some truth to it.”

El sighs. “Safe to say that is _not_ the case. We were supposed to meet up on my break. He bailed.”

“Shit. I’m sorry,” Kali hisses, squeezing her sister’s arm before an absolutely _devious_ smirk (that El _hates,_  just for the record) overcomes her face. “So...how’d he look?”

“Amazing,” El sighs again, dreamily this time, before sitting up slightly, propped up on her elbows. “Actually, to be honest...he looked kind of terrible. Miserable, really.”

“Oh? Ever think it’s possible that he’s still absolutely _sick_ over you and came out here to find you?” 

“Please, Kals,” El scrunches her nose, flicking the older girl on the arm. “Don’t plant those crazy ideas in my head.

“Jane,” Kali snorts. “If I wanted to plant things in your head, I could do that without speaking.”

“Yeah,” she groans, rolling over and crawling up towards the covers, willing this conversation to be over. “None of that, either.”

“No promises,” Kali winks before heading off to her own bed (separated from El’s by a half-assed divider screen that has certainly seen better days).

The next day passes painfully slowly and for the first time since she’s started, basically, El’s actually itching to get back to work. Sure, she won’t be able to look at the spot Mike was sitting in _ever again_ (assuming she works at this diner for the rest of her life…), but it’s still a distraction, especially now that she’s realizing that there’s a shred of his influence in every other piece of decor in her whole living space.

She’s working a double, finally accustomed to their increased traffic, and proud of herself for just how able she is to distract herself from the Mike situation—seriously, she only thinks about him every other minute, now, as opposed to every single minute ( _checkmate_ ).

It’s after her shift that she considers using her powers for anything other than sheer convenience for the first time in a _long_ time. Sure, the city is full of dangers, but she keeps to herself more often than not, and Hopper instilled enough of his big city values to her (even when they didn’t exactly apply to Hawkins, Indiana) before she left that she’s not totally helpless. But the moment she slides out the side staff door she just feels a _presence_ behind her in the dark. It’s kind of strange, though, because while not able to see this person in the dark and knowing little more than her coworkers and sisters in this town, she doesn’t exactly _feel_ in danger. But before she can contemplate what it all means, the person is stepping into the light and all she can see are freckles and sharp cheekbones and chapped, scabbed lips and eyes shadowed by both bad lighting and the weight of the bags underneath it.

“Mike,” she gasps. “You’re here.” 

“I- uh...yeah,” he responds lamely.

They just stare at each other in silence, then, the intensity in his stare threatening to tear El apart from the inside out, she’s sure of it.

“Mike-” She tries again, weakly, but is swiftly cut off.

“Is _this_ what you’ve been doing all this time? Where you’ve been?” He basically explodes and she knows that she deserves it (more than anything), but it’s been so long that he’s been anything other than _soft_ to her that she can’t help but wince.

“I- Kali-” She attempts, but there are just too many things to say and Mike is right in front of her and the smell of garbage is wafting by and _holy shit_ this is _not_ how this is supposed to go.

“ _Kali_?” He spits. “Who’s Kali?”

“My sister.” She can’t help but deliver the fierceness back despite knowing he absolutely doesn’t deserve it—but at the end of the day, Kali is still _family_.

“Your what?” Confusion is evident on his face, but his tone doesn’t lose any of its previous acidity.

“Sister,” she growls, crossing her arms. “We should go somewhere to talk, we’re standing in shit.”

“Fine,” he scoffs. “My dorm is just-”

“No,” she stops him. “N-no. I want you to see where I’ve been.”

“El,” his tone is softer this time and her heart skips a beat at hearing it in that boyish way after all this time. “I’m sorry about yesterday, I-”

El just shakes her head (how is _he_ apologizing now?). “Don’t apologize. I’m the only one who should be apologizing right now. Let’s go.”

So he follows, keeping a safe, protective distance—which El almost rolls her eyes at until she reminds herself of the situation at hand. The ride to their apartment is quiet and tense and El never thought she’d see the day that she wished for a commotion on the train just to have a distraction. But the younger, sillier, _much_ more misguided part of her (aka her big, stupid heart) is still giddy over the situation, whether she likes it or not.

They enter the warehouse with little fanfare, El giving him a minute to just take it all in. The emotions she used to be so good at reading are now flashing over his face too quickly for her to even catch.

“Glad to see you’ve made yourself comfortable here,” he sneers and she winces again. 

“What else was I supposed to do?” She cries back. “If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been living in a fucking abandoned warehouse, not exactly the penthouse.”

“Sorry?” Mike narrows his eyes at her. “Did you forget that you had a perfectly good bedroom at _home_? In Hawkins, Indiana? Remember that place? Jeeze, El, I know it’s a shithole, but if you wanted to leave you could’ve just said so, I would’ve gone any-”

“You think I _wanted_ this?!” El explodes now, anguish practically leaking out her pores. “I met my _mom_ here. And Kali, my sister. And no, they didn’t replace you—any of you—and they never fucking will. But they’re my family, too. The closest thing to a biological one. And they _needed_ me.”

“Oh yeah? Ever stop to think that _I_ needed you, too? Hop? Hm?” His voice is dangerously close to breaking, now, but something in El (read: her insecurities) are still driving her to push, push, _push_.

“Please,” El scoffs, crossing her arms. “Who do you think you’re kidding? You’re lives only got _more_ complicated once I showed up. Don’t act like I wasn’t doing you a favor.”

Mike gapes, astonish. “Are you- ? You’re kidding. Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

“Tell me what part of what I said is wrong,” El rolls her eyes.

“Y’know what?” Mike throws his hands up in exasperation. “You’re right. You _did_ make our lives harder. In face, you made them hell. Absolute hell on earth.”

El just turns her head up to the ceiling, burning eyes shut tight as she releases a dry, sarcastic laugh. It’s not as though she’d _forgotten_ just how fiercely passionate Mike could be, it’s just that it hadn’t been directed at her in quite some time (and usually when it was, it had an equally, erm, _passionate_ ending).

“But none of that was when you were _there_ ,” Mike continues, taking one step closer to her. “No. Everything we had to go through to keep you felt like a miracle. Any pain caused by some fucking dumb demogorgon or alternate reality or mad scientist or _whatever_ was nothing, _nothing_ compared to how it felt when you left. And stayed gone. What would you have done if I hadn’t stumbled into your diner?”

“I- I…” El stammers, taken aback.

Mike’s choked up now, eyes brimming with tears. “Since when do you give up, El? Since when do _we_ give up? What happened?”

“I don’t know,” she cries, tears now running down her own face.

“We came looking for you, y’know,” Mike scoffs. “Hop and I. Driving around Chicago, yelling for you like crazy people.”

“Yeah?” El manages a watery smile at the sight. 

“Part of me,” he gulps, looking down at his feet. “Part of me came to University of Chicago just in hopes that I would run into you somehow.”

“Well look at that,” she huffs out a breathy, dry laugh again.

“That’s part of why I came back tonight,” Mike admits, finally looking back up at El in a way that makes her face absolutely _burn_ . “I really just wanted— _needed_ —to see you. After all this time. It was like I needed to convince myself you weren’t just a mirage.”

She actually does risk a real laugh, this time. “Me too.”

Something strange settles into the air, then, bordering on too familiar and awkward at the same time. 

“Um,” Mike starts, wringing his fingers nervously in a move that El’s all too familiar with (because she’s picked it up, too, no matter how long they’ve been apart). “I should be going now.”

El tries to stop her face from falling. “Oh. Okay. We can keep in touch, right?”

“Y-yeah,” Mike nods. “You have my number. Feel free to use it.”

“I will,” El nods definitively, playing with the slip of paper in her pocket (she’s been taking it with her everywhere for no reason other than just wanting to have a piece of _him_ with her—the sweater of his she’d worn on that inaugural trip to Chicago 2 years ago has long since lost his scent).

“Well. See you later, El,” Mike waves, an awkward, little thing.

“See you later, Mike,” she parrots, trying not to beam at the fact that he _remembered_.

_‘Let’s uh, not say ‘bye,’ okay?’_

Then he leaves and El is torn between feeling like her whole heart just walked out the door and feeling like her heart is _back_ , firmly and completely in her body, parts of it she didn’t really consciously realize were missing all back in their rightful place again.

Sleep comes easier than it has in two years that night—and, yes, she has transferred the slip of paper into her pajama pants’ pocket. 

There’s a frantic knocking at the door bright and early the next morning that wakes them up, Kali first (which is truly a testament to how loud the knock was because that girl sleeps like the dead).

“Jane,” her sister groans, pushing her roughly on the shoulder to rouse her. “What the fuck?”

“What, Kals?” El scrunches her face, trying to shove the girl’s hand away.

“Someone is knocking like the fucking Hulk.” Kali crosses her arms with an accusatory look on her face. “And I’ve never given anyone the address to this place and, up until _yesterday_ , neither have you.”

El practically jolts out of bed, then, because it’s true. She skitters to the door, hair a mess and mismatch-socked feet shoved haphazardly into bunny slippers (despite her being _firmly_ against them when Kali first brought them home, as nearly all cute, small animals now had awful associations in her brain).

“Um, hi,” she answers, one eye squinting as she opens the door and even more sunlight floods in.

“El,” Mike starts, and El can tell he’s just about to _go_. “Yesterday was fine, but also kinda shitty. But great because I saw you, but- ugh, I’m rambling. Let me try again.”

He takes a breath as El is basically holding hers.

“I’ve been fucking _miserable_ since you’ve been gone. I just- everything has really just _sucked_ . Everyone was worried about me, but I just didn’t care, y’know? I know this is all a lot, but I couldn’t just _not_ say it. I still love you. I’m _in love_ with you. More than anything. Fuck, I didn’t even think I was capable of even feeling or thinking or _saying_ that type of thing until I saw you again, no matter how mad I was. And I know this is, a lot, I do. But I also realized—probably when I was 12 years old, even—that I never want to live my life without you in it.”

“Mike,” El croaks, tears shamelessly threatening to drown them both. “Me too.”

He shakes his head so hard he’ll likely need a neck brace. “To what? What part?”

She laughs, shoulders shaking at this, at _him_. “All of it.”

“Oh,” he breathes out, relieved. “Thank god.”

And before she even knows what to do, he has a hand on her face and is kissing her like both their lives depend on it (they do), all the emotion and misery and _anger_ of the past two year poured into it (namely when he bites her lip particularly hard and she whimpers and has to remind them that she has a roommate now, and while it’s not the chief of police anymore, she’s still kinda scary). His other hand is on her hip now, clutching her side so tightly—likely to ground himself, to remind himself that she’s _real_ and she’s _here_ —she’s pretty sure it’ll leave a bruise. He’s peppering her with kisses now, saying _“I love you”_ between each one, and her own hand is clutching the wrist of his hand on her face as if to anchor her down to earth.

They stay there like that for what might as well be forever (and will be, if either of them have anything to say about it)—sharing lazy, slow kisses without a care in the world—before Mike comes up for air, keeping his forehead pressed tightly to hers.

“El?”

“Hm?” She asks. She’s not really capable of making words right now.

“Do you still like Eggos?”

 

**_END_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another ending! Also a long-ass chapter. I was hating this, but then ended up really, really liking it.


	15. Time After Time

She thinks long and hard about the things she saw—Mama, that dream with the 008 tattoo and the Chicago sign—but then she thinks about everything _else_ . About Hopper and _Mike_ (oh god, he’s probably so worried, she never did show up to school) and Will and Max and everyone, anyone who’s ever touched  her life in a positive way in Hawkins. She’s tired, so tired.

So, promising that this trip won’t be her last, she just gets back on the bus to go _home_.

Given the trip to Mama and Aunt Becky’s, _then_ to the heart of Chicago, _then_ combined with all her waffling (ha) in the bus station, she doesn’t get back into Hawkins until after midnight, and isn’t back to the cabin until nearly 1.  

She slips inside as silently as possible (how many times does she have to bring up those creaky floor boards to Hop before he _does something_ ?) and the sight that greets her both warms her chest and feels like a rock has dropped into her stomach with an unceremonious _splash_.

Two people are asleep in the living room—Mike on the main couch (hair a mess, drooling, still in his jeans and polo) and her dad on the chair next to it (still upright, hand poised as if he’d fallen asleep mid-beer). Well, they were asleep.

Mike wakes up first, his eyes sleepily and instinctively softening at the sight of her in a way that makes her feel like mush.

“E-El!” Mike calls out, jumping upright from his spot on the couch, clothes wrinkled beyond belief (she would find it painfully adorably if she wasn’t busy holding her breath for his reaction).

This finally startles Hopper out of his bear-like slumber, his gravelly snores ceasing with what sounds like a choke (El is gonna kill him if he’s started smoking again).

Hop, late to the party, glances between the two teens, sighing.

“ _Christ_ ,” he grumbles at the apparent tension between the two before pointing a finger at El. “We are talking about this once I’m back inside. But, for now, I’m going out to smoke a cigarette.”

Well, that answers the smoking thing, she guesses.

Her fingers are itching to reach out and touch him, she just wants to be in his space _so badly_ , but judging by his distance and the clench of his jaw, she knows she needs too let him make the first move.

“Where have you been, El?” He gulps. “I-I’ve been here for _hours_. You didn’t come to school.”

El crosses her arms against her chest protectively even though this is _Mike_ and he’d never, ever hurt her (not intentionally, at least). “I, uh…”

“I was so worried. We both were. _Everyone_ was.”

She clears her throat, then. “I went to Chicago.”

“Chicago,” Mike parrots, cold and stern in a way that hurts her chest. “You went to _Chicago_? Without telling anyone.”

“I had to!” She cries.

“Why, El? Why didn’t you feel like you could tell me? Or anyone?”

She knows she’s hurting him and she hates, hates, _hates_ it. “I went to see mama.”

“Your wh-who?” Mike shakes his head. “Your mom?”

All El can do is nod.

“And you just weren’t gonna tell anyone?" 

“I didn’t want anyone to stop me, I-”

“El, that was _dangerous_!” Mike finally explodes.

El tightens where her arms are already crossed. “I have _powers_ , Mike. I’ve killed.”

“What if something _happened_ to you? You were _alone_.”

She realizes that his fears are perfectly human and, honestly, she absolutely _hates_ fighting with him. But she can’t help the stubborn streak that bubbles up inside her. It’s true, after all, she has psionic powers and an ability to literally find people in a Void, so she’s hardly defenseless. She’s not _just_ human, never _just_ , no matter how much Mike and the boys and Max and Hopper and everyone else try to help her feel like it.

But she knows that they’re at an impasse when Hop finally comes back in and tells Mike to go home. He tries to fight Hopper on it (her brave, dumb boy), but ultimately huffs and acquiesces, shuffling past her with a watery, hurt glance. For the first time since she met him, basically, they didn’t say goodbye, or goodnight, or anything.

Before she can cry herself to sleep over the rising ache in her chest, though, she has to explain to Hopper, who’s equally perturbed and (rightfully, she guesses) grounds her for a week.

“I should’ve known,” she hears him grumble as he shuffles out of the room and to his own bed and somehow El thinks that hurting them both feels almost as bad as seeing—vividly and in color—what they did to Mama. Almost.

She tosses and turns all night, all the hurt in her head and chest and body blending into a mosaic of strange dreams, flitting in and out of her REM cycle. For once, she doesn’t really remember them when she wakes up, but it doesn’t stop her from feeling sufficiently unsettled.

Hopper makes them scrambled eggs and sausage ( _“No Eggos while you’re grounded, kiddo”_ ) and she tries to make his coffee as a token of how sorry she is (it sucks, but Hopper still chokes it down with a tight smile), but things are still noticeably tense, pain and distrust hanging in the air like haze on a humid summer’s day. He tells that when she’s ready to talk, he’ll be there, and he sort of understands. But she’s still grounded.

Their meal is interrupted, then, by a third (but never unwelcome, not to her) guest doing the secret knock as if their life depends on it, hurried and frantic. She sees Hopper roll his eyes—the secret knock isn’t technically a _thing_ anymore, so there’s only one person it could be (okay, two, when Dustin feels like being a smartass). He just raises his eyebrow at her, eyes shifting towards the increasing rapping on the door, and that’s enough for her to get the message that _‘I ain’t answering that, kid.’_

She opts to meet him outside, making sure the door is shut tightly, though she knows the walls are thin enough that Hopper could eavesdrop if he wanted to (it’s not like she doesn’t do it to him and Joyce literally _all the time_ ).

“H-hi,” she squeaks out, eyes planted firmly on where she’s wringing her hands.

“Hi,” he breathes out and his lip quirks up just the _tiniest_ bit before dropping back down, likely when he remembers that, _oh yeah_ , he’s supposed to be mad at her.

“I’m sorry,” El blurts out as if keeping the words in will literally _kill_ her (which, to be honest, it _could_ —they do already know that her powers plus withheld emotions is a dangerous cocktail).

“No, El, it’s-” Mike stammers before sighing and righting all his thoughts. “I wanted to come by because I forgot something last night.”

“What?” She asks, furrowing her brows.

And the next thing she knows, Mike’s closed the distance between them, wrapping his arms around her like he can’t possibly get close enough (and, right now, she feels like he can’t). He just holds her for a moment—silently breathing her in from where he towers over her—before showering her with soft, gentle kisses, starting with her hair then moving down to pepper them across her face, so much so that it makes her giggle. It’s the first time she’s laughed in days.

“You’re like a dog!” She squeals, pretending to try to squirm away from him, but not-so-secretly loving it (he knows, obviously). 

“Hey!” He laughs. “No insulting me when I’m supposed to be mad at you.”

And with that, she manages to still him, pulling him back into a simple, tight embrace, so tight she’s not sure if she can even breathe, actually, but it’s okay. More than okay.

Her head is in the crook of his neck and his face is buried in her hair and they just _fit_ , like two puzzle pieces—one of those really big and complicated ones, but they’re the two most obvious pieces, always.

“Hey,” she whispers into his neck in a way that makes him shiver. “Stop sniffing my hair for a second.”

“What?” He pulls back slightly, and the embarrassed blush on his cheeks makes everything worth it.

“I love you,” she breathes out, taking his face in her hands as if she’s holding a precious gem or Hopper’s favorite Christmas ornament (the one that Sara painted). “So much.”

She can tell Mike’s about to get choked up and she almost has half a mind to tickle his side just to see him smile or hear him laugh again, but she doesn’t. Not now.

“Fuck, El. I love you, too. More than anything.”

Then they’re kissing, and it last for minutes and days and millennia and it feels like a promise, like they know that moving forward, whatever they do, they’ll do it _together_ , they’re two halves of a ridiculous whole that makes both no sense and all the sense in the entire damn world.

“Oh,” Mike says, gazing down at her once they’ve finally broken apart (rude). “I brought you something.”

“Hm?” She perks up, almost, but her legs still feel like cherry JELLO, so Mike keeps an arm firmly around her waist as the other reaches into the bag from Bradley’s Big Buy that he’d tossed onto the porch earlier.

She’d recognize that shiny yellow box anywhere, a beacon of golden delicious light getting her through even the darkest times (El? Dramatic? _Never_ ). But then her face falls—barely, because she’s still in Mike’s arms and they’re in love, and all, and that’s _maybe_ the slightest bit more important than a box of frozen waffles—before she speaks again.

“Oh,” she recalls. “I actually can’t have Eggos while I’m grounded.”

Mike snorts. “Huh. Can you have guests while you’re grounded?”

El just rolls her eyes, yanking him into the cabin behind her. “ _Please_ , I’m pretty sure Hop likes you better than me right now, so he probably figures the two of you can just haze me.”

It’s later when they’re tangled on the Hopper couch watching some pointless movie that her _excursion_ gets brought up again.

“Hey El?” He says, softly, partially probably because he isn’t sure if she’s even awake (which is a fair assessment, because he’s been carding his fingers through her hair all night—seriously, he must be well on his way to carpal tunnel—and that always tends to knock her out).

“Yeah,” she tries to twist her head up to look at him but he just laughs, readjusting them so he’s firmly spooning her from behind, face buried in her hair and her body pulled as tightly as it possibly could be to his.

“I’m happy you’re home.” 

At that, she just _beams_ , feeling overcome by the warmth between them and the softness of where their bodies just seem to mold together as one with this old, scratchy couch (Hopper never did get around to updating it, did he?) and she just knows that this is what _home_ really means, and always will.

“Me too.”

 

**_END_ **


	16. Livin' on a Prayer

“Um, uh…” El stammers, weighing her options.

“We have rocky road,” Nancy offers in a sing-song voice, then switches her tone back to normal. “But it’s totally up to you, if you think it’ll be too much, don’t worry about it.”

Well _that_ changes everything—Hopper has only ever brought home butter pecan (blech) or chocolate (magic, especially on Eggos).

“I would...like to go,” El says, her expression bordering on bashful before she remembers. “Please.”

Nancy offers her a wide smile, pulling out her keys.

“Let’s go, then!” She swings her keyring on her finger a few times for emphasis, El finds it slightly hypnotic. “Get your books together.”

El gathers her things in record speed and is hot on Nancy’s heels, wearing her hand-me-down purple denim shorts, one of Hopper’s Hawkins PD t-shirts (it’s huge on her, but she finds it soft and comforting), and a pair of white Converse high tops that Nancy brought over a few weeks ago with little explanation as to where they came from—El doesn’t know _fashion_ , or anything, despite all the magazines that have been slipped between the pages of her textbooks, but she knows the shoes aren’t particularly Nancy’s style. Nancy doesn’t even complain when El can’t settle on a radio station.

But it doesn’t matter, anyway, because after what feels like no time at all, Nancy’s cutting the engine and El looks up and, uh, _wow_. She would recognize this house anywhere—lurking around the front bushes, sneaking into the basement, gathering all her courage on the front porch, knocking one, two, _three_ times, the smell of Mrs. Wheeler’s perfume, the _softness_ of Mike’s clothes ( _Mike_ ). Her heart is in her throat and she has to blink far too many times, hand clutching the door handle, to convince herself that she’s real and she’s here and isn’t just seeing this in a dream or the void. It feels like a punch in the gut.

She collects herself quickly enough because now Nancy is at her door, opening it with an airiness that suggests she has no awareness of El’s plight (and, well, why would she, after all?). Gulping, El follows her inside, gingerly placing her books down where Nancy tells her to—in the living room, not too far from where Mike’s photo (wow, he _is_ real) is up on the mantle—and allowing the promise of ice cream to distract her. The house looks different than it did from what she could see past Mrs. Wheeler’s expertly coiffed hair and wrinkle-free skirt.

“Don’t be nervous, my parents aren’t home, or anything,” Nancy shrugs, smiling as she navigates the kitchen.

All El can do is laugh because of course this situation is _so weird_ and it’s Nancy’s parents she’s the _least_ concerned about.

Nancy is scooping the ice cream when they hear a door closing somewhere else in the house, and then footsteps gradually growing closer.

And then, like a vision, _Mike himself_ is walking through the kitchen, huffing with his eyebrows furrowed in what El can only assume is frustration. She freezes. He hasn’t even noticed her yet and she’s a little afraid of what will happen when he does. But her heart is beating _super_ fast and her hands feel all clammy (not slimy, she learned), but Nancy is still none the wiser.

“I’m never gonna finish this campaign,” he groans, more to himself than anyone else, though he’s now next to Nancy at the counter, pouring himself some orange juice. 

“Um, Mike-” Nancy attempts, but he continues to grumble to himself.

El feels embarrassed, now, like she wishes the floor would swallow her up, even if it means she ends up back in the Upside Down (okay, maybe not _that_ ).

“ _Mike!_ ” Nancy shouts, finally snapping Mike out of his own head.

“ _What_?” He’s already rolling his eyes and she hasn’t even said anything.

El, for what it’s worth, finds it very funny, but she’s afraid giggling will ruin the moment or call attention to her (she’s not sure she’s ready for that yet), so she swallows the impulse.

“We have a guest,” Nancy crosses her arms, rolling her own eyes this time.

“Huh-” Mike starts, annoyed.

But then he turns his head and his eyes get so big that El would find it hilarious if her cheeks weren’t _burning_. She feels as though a spotlight has been put on her and is terrified of what will happen next, even though she thinks she should feel happy.

“El!” Mike cries out, and El _also_ wants to cry, because it’s been so long since she heard that name in _his_ voice, the first one to ever even give it to her. He remembered. “Wh-what?”

“Hi,” is all she can say, shy as ever. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Nancy watching the situation with interest.

“What are you- what is she doing here?!” Mike’s attention is back on his sister now.

“Eating ice cream, obviously,” she rolls her eyes again for good measure. “I’ve been tutoring her.”

Mike scoffs. “You? A tutor?”

“Asshole!”

And El actually _does_ giggle this time, because the situation feels so bizarre and funny and right and _warm_ and she feels like she’s actually a part of it.

“Tutoring her in what? Also were you not gonna offer me ice cream, too?”

“You know where the ice cream is, baby brother,” Nancy teases. “And in everything—El is supposed to start school in the fall.”

“El? At Hawkins Middle?!” Mike is in awe, he finally turns back to her and El’s face is still on fire. “You’re gonna be coming to school with us?”

 _Us_. The boys.

El shrugs, bashful. “Trying." 

Mike is, apparently, already a few steps ahead of the situation, scooping out his own ice cream and crossing the room to grab El’s bowl.

“C’mon, El, this is too important to leave up to _Nancy_. We can go study in the basement."

She laughs, face brightening at the distinct memory of the Wheeler basement. Before she can look back to see if she’s mad, El hears Nancy laughing, too.

“Don’t go easy on her, Mike! She needs to pass the entrance test!” They hear Nancy calling once they’ve reached the basement door.

“ _OKAY_ ,” Mike calls back in exasperation, voice cracking.

Once in the basement, it takes a minute for El to adjust, to believe that it’s really real, she’s really here. And she’s still not the best at reading people (yet), but if his hazy expression means anything, she thinks Mike is experiencing the same thing.

He plops the books down on the table unceremoniously—being far more gentle with the ice cream bowls—before he even realizes El has stopped on the stairs.

“El! You okay?” His voice is soft and full of concern, just as she’d always remembered it.

“You kept it,” El gulps. “The fort.”

Mike blushes, then ( _pretty_ ). “Oh, uh, yeah. I wasn’t sure if you’d ever come back here, or would need a place to stay again, or something. Kinda dumb, right?”

El just smiles, wide and with teeth, and it’s the warmest she’s felt in a long time. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

 

**_END_ **


	17. Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now

“Um, uh,” El wrings her hands nervously—outside, people, _strangers_ —while weighing the options. “Maybe not today.”

She feels ashamed all of a sudden, like she’s letting Nancy down, like _normal kids_ would gladly jump at the chance for rocky road and a change of scenery (hey, she’s not knocking some cabin escapism, but she just prefers it on her own terms).

“Hey, it’s okay!” Nancy says, instantly comforting. “We can just go some other time. It’s gonna be a _long_ summer, Ellie.”

El attempts a smile before looking back down at the workbook in her lap. “Okay.”

 _“Some other time”_ never comes—not really, anyway, though Nancy does show up the following week with a carton of rocky road... _and_ they go eat it outside by the brook in the woods, so it’s basically checking off both those boxes.

But Nancy’s not wrong. Summer in Hawkins _is_ long. And stiflingly hot. And just when El thinks her brain is about to explode from stuffing all of this information into it (do regular kids have bigger, school-adapted brains? She knows from her science lessons that it’s not true, but she still has her suspicions— _”conspiracies_ ,” Hop calls them), it’s finally time for her big test. The test that will determine whether or not she gets to join Hawkins Middle with every other kid. So, no pressure.

Hopper takes off that day—or, rather, he just turns his pager off—and Nancy also accompanies them to the school, El insisting that she quiz her with notecards all the way up to the school’s double doors.

Hopper signs her in like a dutiful dad (he even calls her his _daughter_ when they get to the desk, which makes El feel so warm inside she’s in danger of just forgetting everything she spent the better half of the year learning), though not without any teasing. El is muttering factoids to herself on the way to the exam room when she hears him call after her.

“Don’t spell your name wrong,” he winks, laughing gruffly.

El just huffs, rolling her eyes in the way that Hopper tells her time and time again that she’s _far_ too good at for her age. She doesn’t have time for _jokes_ , she needs to focus, dammit (oh yeah, she picked the cursing up from him, too).

While she clams up a bit when she first opens the booklet in front of her, she eventually gets more comfortable with it, filling in the bubbles just like she and Nancy had practiced (and going over them one or two or six times, just for good measure). She does get reprimanded by the proctor once for reading the question out loud to herself—which is honestly _ridiculous_ , since the room is empty, save for the two of them (but Hopper told her “no questioning authority _yet_ ” so she keeps her mouth shut and doesn’t even mysteriously make the lady’s fresh coffee spill all over her beloved crossword puzzle— _'where’s the section where she’s graded for showing impressive restraint?'_ She wonders)—but otherwise the room is silent aside from the seconds passing on the clock hanging above the door.

The writing portion is a menace. El knows _what_ she wants to say, it just takes her five different incoherent scribbles on scrap paper (which Nancy said kids usually use up on the math portion, but she didn’t need it) to figure out _how_ to say it best. She also desperately hopes there’s no grade for handwriting. Compared to Hopper’s at home, it didn’t seem so bad, but now she’s having second thoughts (she doesn’t even _think_ about what it looks like compared to Nancy’s).

But before she can attempt to adopt a whole new handwriting style—it could be easy, no?—the proctor‘s (her name is Miss Ulrich, but El hopes she never has to see her again, so she’s not trying to commit it to memory, or anything) watch beeps, signaling that, for better or for worse, El is done.

“Pencil down,” Miss Ulrich calls out weakly, scrunching her nose at what appears to be a mistake in her crossword (given how much of a sponge for information she is, El could probably easily slip into the Void, look at the paper, then supply the answer, but 1. That’s definitely against dad’s rules and 2. El Hopper knows how to hold a grudge).

El sighs, half out of nerves and half out of a feeling of accomplishment. Miss Ulrich collects her paper and, wow, she’s done. Officially. And all that’s left to do is wait. 

“You’ll find out the results next Monday,” Miss Ulrich calls as an afterthought as El is already mostly out the door.

She knows from Hopper’s calendar that Monday is only 4 days away. _Excruciating_. Suddenly she feels her lucky Eggos coming up.

She finds Hop leaning against his truck in the fire lane ( _naturally_ ). “Hey kiddo. How’d it go?”

“Guess I’ll find out,” she shrugs, all nonchalant as though she hasn’t gone from being borderline non-verbal to basically auditioning for a spot in a school in under a year.

“How do you feel?”

“The same.”

“Sheesh,” Hop rolls his eyes. “I was hoping that since you’re not my biological kid you’d actually learn how to express your emotions.”

“Oh, shut up,” she laughs, nudging him with her shoulder and snorting.

“There she is,” Hop laughs in return—he knows he should reprimand her, or something, and also knows it’s just gonna get _worse_ the older she gets, but he can’t find it in himself to care. He’s just happy she’s saying _anything_. “Benny’s?”

“Benny’s,” El agrees, hopping up into the passenger seat of the truck.

Turns out that four days—while painful—aren’t _actually_ all that long, so, soon enough she’s standing in the middle of the cabin, Hawkins Middle letter in her hand and Nancy and Hop on either side of her.

“Kid, the anticipation is killing me,” he groans.

Okay, so she’s been standing there for about fifteen minutes.

“Do you want me to just open it, El?” Nancy offers, eyes kind and reassuring.

“Please, put us out of our misery,” Hopper teases before softening his tone and crouching down towards his daughter. “El, no matter what happens, you’ve worked _hard_ and should be proud of yourself. Don’t you want to find out the result?”

So, gripping Hopper’s hand and holding the letter in the other, she shuts her eyes tight and begins to gingerly slide the envelope open, careful not to shred it with her powers. Beside her she hears Hop grumbling something about _“I should’ve said ‘no powers,’”_ but she can’t be bothered to pay it any mind.

With a shaking hand, she takes the piece of paper out, letting the envelope flutter to the floor.

“Dear El Hopper,” She reads, stopping to snort. “I can’t believe we really just put _‘El_.’”

She clears her throat before starting again.

“ _Dear El Hopper,_

_Due to the results of your entrance exam taken on Thursday, August 9th, we would like to welcome you to Hawkins Middle School’s eighth grade class of 1985. More details and paperwork to follow._

_Congratulations and welcome! Go Cubs, go!_ ”

“Aye!” Hopper cheers, squeezing El’s hand. “That’s my girl.” 

“You did it, El!” Nancy cries, wrapping the girl in a bear hug that rivals the hold she had on Hop’s hand.

“I- I did it,” El whispers to herself in wonder, almost not believing it’s real.

How is _any_ of this real, really?

“I think I need to, um, sit down,” she says sheepishly, carefully re-folding the letter with her still-shaking hands and sitting in the nearest seat.

Hop is at her side immediately.

“Hey—I know it’s a lot. But you did all of that. _You_. You went through hell just for this paper right here. And god, I’m so proud of ya.”

At that, El just _sobs_ , throwing her arms around her dad’s neck. She’s still working on the whole ‘tempering her emotions’ thing (with mixed results), but she figures this situation warrants it.

“Thank you,” she sniffles, wiping her nose on her sleeve (any other time and Hop would surely chastise her, but today he lets it slide— _sucker_ ). “For everything.”

“You deserve it, El,” he nods, rubbing her on the shoulder.

“And you also deserve ice cream!” Nancy offers, showing up on the other side of them with three bowls (mint chocolate chip this time, one of El’s newest favorites).

Once the acceptance high wears off, El is _nervous_. She gets her papers in the mail, including her schedule—she’s in all remedial classes, which mean little to her, anyway—and it’s just all so much. Hopper’s been taking her out in public more, introducing her as his daughter, but it only really serves to get the little church ladies and gossip moms excited, it’s not like she’s met any _kids_ yet.

That changes the week before school, though, when Hop tells her he has a surprise for her (and she already knows it’s not clothes or school supplies, because that was last week’s surprise).

They pull up to the unassuming house and El lets Hopper take the lead, both trusting him and running through every possible scenario of what horrific thing could be waiting inside that door. But then it’s opening and El feels like her eyes are about to bulge out of her skull.

“Will!” She gasps, seeing him standing a few paces behind who she assumes is his mama.

Will, on the other hand, is stunned into silence. But before that can change, Will’s _mom_ is wrapping her arms around the girl, it actually almost hurts how tight it is, but it feels undeniably _soft_ and _safe_ , so she doesn’t complain or even try to wriggle out (like she would with 99% of uninvited touches).

“Thank you,” The woman sobs, bending down to El’s level. “You saved my boy.”

El shrugs then, because she honestly has no response—she just did what she figured she _had_ to. This was before _school_ and _music_ and literally _having a dad_ , so it just seemed like what she was put on the planet to do (plus it was a hell of a lot better than _hurting_ ).

“T-thanks, El,” Will’s fidgeting at his mom’s side now and suddenly—in an _entirely_ uncharacteristic move— _El_ is inclined to wrap her arms around him.

It’s not like she knows what he went through, not by a long shot. But she’s certainly been _there_ and she knows how hopeless and harrowing it can be.

Once Will’s mom has dried her eyes (vaguely), she leads them further into the house, speaking again.

“So, El, I hear you’re starting at Hawkins Middle this year.”

“Yeah,” she smiles, shy all of a sudden. “Eighth grade.”

“Your dad is very proud of you, y’know,” the woman supplies, stage-whispering behind her hand.

“Stop spilling all my secrets, Joyce,” Hopper barks (but there’s no bite) with an accusatory finger, sliding past the group to grab a glass of water from the kitchen like he knows the place ( _weird_ ).

“Ignore him,” Joyce rolls her eyes.

“Oh, I do,” El giggles in delight, Joyce joining in, too.

“Why don’t you two get to know each other a bit—Will, you better be nice to her in school!”

Will rolls his eyes. “Duh, mom! Come on, El, let’s go in the backyard.”

So they do—there’s not much to it, but El’s always been able to amuse herself with simpler things (read: little to nothing) anyway, so she doesn’t bat an eye. She looks over at a toppled wood structure further away on the grass.

“What’s that?”

“Oh,” Will looks at it sheepishly. “That’s Castle Byers. Or, uh, was. It’s where the demogorgon got me. I’ve been hoping to put it back together one of these days, I’m just not ready yet.”

“The demo-wha-?” El furrows her brows.

“Demogorgon. It’s that monster. The one with the big flower head down there, and all the teeth…” He trails off.

And the weirdest thing happens. El _laughs_.

“ _That’s_ what you call that thing?”

“Hey!” Will says defensively, but there’s no real edge to it. “What else was I supposed to call it? Plus it looks like this thing in this game my friends play. So, idunno, it just _fit_.”

“Demogorgon,” El considers. “I like it.”

But then the two are dissolving into a fit of giggles right there on the grass and El wonders if maybe eighth grade won’t be so scary.

 _‘Famous last words_ , _’_ she thinks as she hops down from her dad’s truck outside Hawkins Middle.

She suddenly feels beyond stupid in the outfit she _painstakingly_ picked out—her favorite overalls over a light yellow tee with lace detail on its short sleeves, all culminating in the high tops Nancy brought her seemingly _forever_ ago—but before she can bolt back to the truck, Hopper is gone.

She doesn’t even really have classes with Will besides math (she’s good enough to be in the regular class compared to remedial, Will’s just average—well, compared to his mega-genius friends, or so he says) and lunch, so she’s mostly on her own. Her first day is graciously little like TV and movies, but she figures that it’s just because everything is such a whirlwind for _everyone_ that they don’t even have the time to worry about the girl they’ve never seen before being dropped off by the literal _chief of police_ (she figures that’ll change in a day or two and is already dreading it).

And since El _loves_ learning, she kind of hates the day, because no learning actually occurs, just receiving books and syllabi and finding out which teachers assign seats and which let you sit with your friends (which, again, doesn’t really apply to her right now—though she does get to sit next to Will in math, as their teacher seems more concerned with the magazine he has “hidden” inside the open textbook on his desk). She doesn’t even get to enjoy lunch, instead being forced to sit through some “new student assembly” consisting of her and four other kids (two of which were sleeping). They get free ice cream sandwiches, though, so it’s not a total loss.

No, nothing interesting happens until her last class of the day, and honestly, she almost misses it entirely, already itching to get home to her soaps (if she’s not learning in school, she may as well be getting educated on the trials and tribulations of Marlena and Roman). Her science teacher is Mr. Clarke, and he’s done going over the syllabus, so most kids have already tuned him out as he goes into an impassioned testimonial for the Hawkins AV Club.

“While a small club, it’s an amazing opportunity for any emerging technophiles at Hawkins!” He emotes, not caring about the rapid loss of attention occurring right before his very eyes. “ _And_ we’ve got some new equipment this year, including, but not limited to this bad boy—”

And then he’s flourishing something that looks suspiciously similar to Mike’s _supercom_ (how does she even _remember_ that? After all this time?) and her interest is officially piqued. While she kind of wrote that day and a half off as some type of fever dream, she’d be lying if she says she ever forgot it—the way everything looked and sounded and _felt_.

“Um, Mr Clarke?” She raises a tentative hand, effectively stopping his monologue about the latest edition of the Super-whatever in his hand.

“Yes, El?” His enthusiasm is weirdly contagious. 

“Where does the AV Club meet?” 

“O- _oh_ !” He looks surprised, as if he were just expecting her to ask for a bathroom pass, or something. “It’s room 535. Looks a bit like a supply closet—well, it _did_ used to be a supply closet, but-”

But El’s stopped listening (oops) because she has all the information she needs.

The bell rings and El all but _sprints_ to the opposite side of the school. She doesn’t even think twice before opening the door with her mind (oops x2—she at least has the discretion to jiggle the handle and _pretend_ , though) and suddenly she’s inside. She doesn’t even know what any of it does, but she just knows that it’s _so cool_. She thinks back to the lab (shudder) and how Papa could talk to people from all over the world—maybe she could do that here, but for _good_.

She’s so enthralled by the equipment she’s playing with that she doesn’t hear the door open behind her.

“Hey, wha-” The mysterious (but strangely familiar) voice starts, then stops, saying the next part under his breath. “ _Whoa_. A _girl_?”

El nearly has a heart attack, jumping away from the equipment as if it had burned her.

“I’m sor- _Mike_.” El’s eyes must be playing tricks on her. There’s _no way_.

“El?” Mike can’t stop blinking—it would be funny if El weren’t so utterly _gobsmacked_ (that’s a word she’s learned fairly recently and she loves it). “H-how?”

Her feet are moving on their own accord and then he’s wrapping his arms around her, so tight like he thinks she might disintegrate if he doesn’t hold all her pieces together.

“I thought you were just a dream I had, for a while,” he says into her hair, feeling candidly brave. “Is that dumb?”

“No,” she breathes, _almost_ laughing. “So did I.”

“How did you, um, get here?” Mike asks once they’ve broken apart. “Did you sneak in? Do you need the heathkit to communicate with somebody? I know the lab is closed now, but are the bad me-” 

El snorts, effectively silencing his ramblings. “I go here, Mike.”

“Y-you do?”

She rolls her eyes, laughing again. “There’s so much you need to get caught up on.”

And she’s not-so-secretly elated that, for once, _she’s_ not the one who needs to do the catching up.

“How about, um, right now?!” Mike offers, adorably eager, and El feels that _warm_ feeling again, almost as if it never left.

 “Okay...where?”

“Ice cream?” He shrugs, looking bashful. “It’s, like, still pretty humid out and stuff.”

The warm feeling is threatening to swallow her whole, so she can’t really think of any possible objections. “Ice cream sounds good.”

She digs out her emergency quarters, using them to call her dad on the payphone—he asks suspiciously few questions once El tells her who she’s getting ice cream with (a boy named Mike, _no_ , she doesn’t know his last name yet, floppy dark hair, freckles), which she files away for later.

El figures they have a lot of ground to cover, so she starts chatting during the ride over on his bike—it’s pretty easy, basically being in his ear, and all.

“So I was getting tutored all summer by this older girl, Nancy Wheeler,” El explains and Mike practically crashes his bike.

“You’re joking.”

“Um, no?”

He elaborates once they’ve dismounted, gently propping his bike against a nearby parking meter.

“Nancy’s my older sister,” Mike laughs. “Holy _shit_ , that explains where she was all summer. I just thought she was off sucking face with Jonathan.”

El can’t help but laugh, too. “And to think, all this time we were practically right under each other’s noses…”

“Yeah,” Mike looks glum for a moment, then shakes it off. “Well, now you get to be one of the certified AV nerds." 

El rolls her eyes, stepping up to order—Mike insists on paying and El doesn’t think her cheeks have ever felt so warm (seriously, she could hold her cone, like, _a foot_ away from her face and it would melt from the heat radiating off her blush).

It isn’t until they’re settled in on the bench outside and he’s just shared seven of his thirteen napkins to clean the mint chocolate chip melting down her hand that she speaks again.

“Wait.” She starts, in all seriousness. “What’s with you Wheelers and ice cream?”

 

**_END_ **

 


	18. Let's Dance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note 1: I’ve decided that I think I want to bump the timeline up for this one, only to the early 90s, solely for one reference
> 
> Note 2: I love playing god
> 
> Note 3: Another gag-worthy long chapter

To add insult to injury, she yelps, literally _yelps_ (she could just die, right then and there) before muttering a “thank you” and skittering off with her stack of books. She’s still jogging when she reaches the doors to the library, a few curious faces glancing up at her and a huff from the librarian (El hopes they can get past this, she quite likes reading and, well, she’ll probably also be doomed to spend lunch here for eternity now). She plops at the nearest table and laments that the damage is probably already done.

With her forehead resting on the tabletop (she does that a lot), she scrunches her eyes shut, but it’s useless because the vision of swooping dark hair that curls at the ends and high cheekbones and a smattering of freckles— _god_ , those freckles—is already sufficiently burned into her mind.

The only thing that shakes her out of her existential crisis is the rumble of her stomach, earning her another reproachful look from the librarian ( _fuck_ ) before she digs around her backpack for her bagged lunch. She smiles as she remembers her dad _insisting_ he make it for her last night because it was a “big day” and “that’s what overbearing dads do, duh.”

She savors her turkey sandwich with a side of melancholy and stuffs her baby carrots back into her bag—they’re far too loud to eat in there and she’s already on thin ice.

She gets a good rhythm going over the next week or so, not unlike how it was in Indianapolis—show up, chit-chat with Max, go to class, eat in the library, and keep her head down. But it’s also _entirely_ unlike how it was in Indianapolis because Indianapolis didn’t have _him_. A stringbean in a hoodie whose name she doesn’t even know, but whose face is still so clear in her brain that she could draw a police sketch on him if she ever needed to (she hopes that’s never the case, but actually, maybe a life of crime wouldn’t be so bad).

It’s a Friday night when she’s minding her business and watching her shows when her dad comes home from work early for a change, clearly startled at the sight of her. 

“El! You’re...home?”

“Looks that way, huh?” She glances around the room for an exaggerated effect, eliciting an eye roll from him.

“But it’s Friday.”

“Yes, and…?” She’s pretending she doesn’t know where he’s going with this, but she does. 

Even at her old school she had things to do on Fridays, random sleepovers or pizza parties or extracurricular-related events. The thing about El is that she’s just always been so _nice_. Soft and friendly and _a pleasure to have in class_. She flitted in and out of places with seemingly practiced ease and, despite that, was incredibly difficult to get (or at least _stay_ ) mad at. Sure, she was clumsy, curt when she was tired or just coffee deprived, sometimes laughed too loud, had generally awkward tendencies, made a boy cry in debate club once, and often didn’t match, but anyone attempting to capitalize on any of those factors learned quickly enough that she just shrugged it off. She was transient, and moving as frequently as she did throughout childhood made everyone feel simply like background characters in the (honestly kind of _boring_ ) movie of her life. Did she want it to change? Sure, yes. But for the time being, she was less concerned about making friendship bracelets with the girls in homeroom and more preoccupied with trying to stuff enough Days of Our Lives drama into her brain to replace _freckles_ and _dark hair_ and _cheekbones_ and _soft_.

“Well,” Hop comes back from the kitchen, his words slightly muffled over the apple he’s chewing—and attempting to enjoy. “You’ll have plans tomorrow.”

He’s pointing the apple like an accusation, and she just nods at him to continue.

“Oh, I will?”

“We’re going to my friend Joyce’s.” Of course El’s interest is immediately piqued (Joyce is certainly a traditionally feminine name, after all). “She has a son about your age, maybe you’ve seen him around school.”

Her pace quickens in that teenage way where you irrationally think everything in the world relates back to your crush (wait, _crush_ ? Since _when_ ?) and she already has her mouth open to tell her dad she’s sorry, she can’t go, because she’ll be busy being _dead_.

“Average height, kinda tiny kid, actually. Looks like he has a bit of a bowl cut,” Hop half-laughs, mainly just breathing extra air out of his nose.

El visibly deflates, sinking into the recliner and saying a silent prayer of thanks to whatever god is in charge of _not_ making the boy she’s about to meet tomorrow and the son of some woman his dad apparently still holds a torch for the same boy she bumped into in the hallway and would be content to bump into every day for the rest of her life like Groundhog Day.

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” she shrugs. Does her voice sound even? She hopes to god it sounds even. “But I guess I’ll see tomorrow.”

“That you will,” Hop nods, seemingly just as grateful that the conversation is over. “Any ideas for dinner?”

“Pizza?” She looks up with a face full of hope.

“Isn’t Friday pizza day at good old Hawkins High?”

“If you call Saltines topped with tomato soup and Kraft singles ‘pizza,’” she grumbles, also choosing not to divulge that she had yet to step foot in the HHS cafeteria after her fateful first day.

“Pizza it is, then,” he raises his apple—which is taking him ages to finish because he absolutely _hates_ it—as if he’s making a toast before turning to the phone.

 

* * *

 

She’s all nervous energy as they’re standing on the steps of the Byers household (even though she already knows it’s not _him_ ) that Saturday afternoon, which her dad _naturally_ teases her about and tells her to “calm down.” But then he’s knocking and a woman’s voice—Joyce’s, El assumes—chimes “just a minute” and Hop practically jumps out of his skin.

“ _Calm down,_ dad,” El mocks, and before her father has a chance to respond the door is swinging open.

El isn’t sure what she was expecting when she met Joyce, but this isn’t it—it’s better, she thinks. She feels immediately at ease in her presence ( _warm_ ) and is grateful for a woman in this town who doesn’t have hair so aggressively coiffed it looks painful to touch.

“Hopper!” The look on her face is almost as if she and El’s father have some kind of inside joke. Surely, they were the only people Joyce was expecting at this time and they really were _on time_ despite Hop’s otherwise constant inclination to be at least 15 minutes late—yet she sounds surprised.

“Joyce,” her dad smiles and El can’t help but examine him throughout this interaction. “Good to see ya...again.”

Wait— _again_?

El furrows her brows at her dad, but he simply shoots her a look that says “I’ll explain later,” and next thing El knows, they’re stepping over the threshold into the Byers residence and she feels like she should give them privacy, or something weird. But before she can turn her back (it’s not like she even knows _where_ to go, anyway, since it’s her first time here, and all), Joyce is speaking again. Well, yelling.

“ _Will!_ ” She calls in the direction of the stairs, exasperation in her voice that tells El there’s probably a backstory there. “Guests!”

“Sorry!” A muffled voice calls back sheepishly.

And soon enough, a small kid (but still very clearly around her age) sporting a bowl cut like her dad had described is bounding down the stairs and dodging the _look_ Joyce is shooting in his direction.

“Hi,” he greets immediately and breathlessly (not an athlete, El guesses). “I’m Will.”

“El,” she nods, awkwardly waving.

Will is peering past her curiously, no doubt eying her dad. Should she feel defensive on his behalf? Maybe. But she also knows her father is the size and stature of a fridge that only rich people can ever afford ( _Better Homes and Gardens_ is her guilty pleasure magazine, and she tucks it away amongst her stacks of _Seventeens_ and _Tiger Beats_ ) 

“Will, this is Hop- Jim. This is Jim,” Joyce interjects.

Joyce seems to be watching the interaction with apprehension, almost like she’s holding her breath. 

“Hopper is fine,” her dad laughs, but she can tell he’s also trying to make a first impression in the way he wasn’t necessarily before (talk about fucking _weird_ ).

“Nice to meet you...Hopper,” Will responds shyly, offering his hand towards the imposing bear of a human being.

“Nice to meet you, too, Will. Your mom seems pretty fond of you." 

The soft, but awkward smile that graces her dad’s features is one she’s rarely ever seen before—who is this alien that’s replaced her father???—but Joyce seems to relax, and Will does, too, and now seemingly all is right with the world.

“Um…” El finally clears her throat, feeling entirely like she’s intruding, which is weird, because it’s her own dad (or an alien in her dad’s skin suit, apparently) after all.

“Oh it’s not like you don’t rave about El, yourself,” Joyce rolls her eyes and El immediately feels childlike gratification over the concept, much more so than the feigned embarrassment most teenagers would default to.

“Wanna go out to the backyard, or something?” Will awkwardly speaks up, fully turned towards El now and sporting a look that desperately says ‘can we please get away from these two space invaders?’.

El doesn’t know what’s in the backyard, but she’s just glad she and Will are on the same page in this regard.

It’s not until they’re nearing a wooden picnic table that’s seen better days that Will speaks again, comprehension dawning on his face.

“Oh! Oh _shit_. You’re El Hopper!”

“I am? I mean, I _am_ , but...yes?” She does not follow.

“You know Max. Max Mayfield.”

“Oh! Max. Yes. We’re, uh, neighbors, I guess? Locker neighbors,” she shrugs.

“Cool. Yeah, Max is one of my best friends. She’s in our Party.”

“Your... _Party_?” Yet again, not following.

Will immediately cringes. “Uh, yeah, it’s like this, colossally nerdy thing from when we were kids. Ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons?”

El laughs, but it’s not mean-spirited, or anything. “Only on TV.”

“Well, yeah, we used to play—haven’t in a while—and that’s what our group was called. It stuck.”

“So you’re all nerds, huh?” El giggles again, speaking up before Will can decide if he should feel affronted or not. “Max mentioned something about her boyfriend, Lucas, being—what were her exact words, again? Oh yes, a _‘total fucking nerd_.’”

“Sounds like Max, alright,” Will laughs. “Yeah, we’re all pretty big dweebs. We’ve at least all found our own things, thank _god_. In 8th grade these douchebags had a running bet on when we’d end up just melding together to form one mega-nerd, or something. Kinda backfired on them, though, because then that meathead had to admit he actually gave enough of a shit in science class to understand cell fusion. Totally ruined his cred.”

Between laughing, El’s been absentmindedly playing with a blade of grass she plucked, twisting it between her fingers. It hasn’t broken yet, somehow.

“That’s nice,” her laugh softens. “It sounds like you’re all really good friends.”

“Yeah, totally. They’re kind of the greatest people I know,” Will shrugs, a second away from blushing over how candid he’s being, but it essentially just pours out in the comfortable atmosphere between the two of them, almost like they’ve known each other for years or lifetimes. “It’s me, Max, Lucas, and also Mike and Dustin. Dustin’s tried to force a girlfriend or two into the mix, but they can never quite keep up.”

“I can’t imagine it’s easy to.”

She’s still laughing, but it’s tinged with some sadness, too. She likes Will, and Max, and even Lucas from the little she knows about him (mostly limited to how, um, _creatively_ he can greet Max in the mornings), so she’s sure she’d like Dustin and Mike, too. But they sound so tight-knit, ironclad, that she thinks she was probably doomed from the start. Her hope is extinguished as quickly as her dad stomps out a cigarette when he realizes El is rounding the corner to their house (she pretends to not know he smokes, anyway).

“So I haven’t seen you around school really, who do you hang out with?”

El gulps, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear in embarrassment. “Oh, uh, nobody really. I sit in the library at lunch…”

“What?! No way. You totally have to sit with us on Monday. Seriously.”

“You sure?” She raises an eyebrow in apprehension, but Will is practically reassuring her before the words even fully come out of her mouth.

And then her dad is calling to tell her they’ll be there for a few hours longer than expected, because he needs to help Joyce with some _home improvements_ (she and Will both snort) so they just stay outside talking well into the evening.

 

* * *

 

She does, indeed, sit with Will and his _Party_ on Monday. But it’s a terrible, horrible mistake. Disastrous. She might as well be back in the library with how silent she is, and she’s sure that all of Will’s friends are questioning his judgment. Even Max—who’s probably heard the second-most amount of words from her—is looking at her sideways.

Because Mike is, well… He’s not just Mike, he’s also _high cheekbones_ and _freckles_ and _swooping hair_ and she didn’t even get to see how _pink_ his lips were that one time, she was so hyper-focused on getting the hell out of there, and he’s even wearing the same sweatshirt(!) as he was that day.

So yeah, she’s made a mistake. And if he’s realizing it, too, she has no idea, because she literally hasn’t glanced his way other than the weak “hi” she offered him at Will’s introduction.

“You good?” Will nudges her, keeping his voice low.

“Just uh...dreading, um...World History?”

“Oh, who do you have?” Max cuts in, leaning into their conversation.

The other three boys are engaged in something boisterous about god-knows-what, for which El is grateful.

“Toomey,” she offers weakly.

“ _God_ ,” Max throws her head back in exasperation. “She’s the _worst_. But on the bright side, she literally doesn’t give a shit. And Willie-boy and I happen to both have free periods…you see where I’m going with this?”

“You’re saying I should skip?” El is certain now that her eyebrows are saying hello to her hairline.

She’s not a goody-two-shoes, or whatever, but she’s never, ever skipped. But the option has also never looked as tempting as it does right now.

“Ding, ding, ding, tell the girl what she won, William.”

Will rolls his eyes. “We hang in room 207, it’s the art room.”

“Cool,” El nods, reassuring herself more than responding to anyone else.

Soon enough, the bell rings, and everyone is throwing away their trash and leaving the room and next thing she knows there’s a flourish of red hair and an arm theatrically thrown around her shoulder.

“Look—those nerds _never_ lie. It’s like a _thing_ they have. Super dorky. But if you’re gonna hang out with me, you’re gonna need to learn how to lie, Ellie,” now it’s Max’s turn to raise an eyebrow.

“I...don’t follow?”

“What was up with you at lunch? I know it wasn’t _Toomy_ , batty as she is,” her free hand makes a dismissive gesture at the thought.

“ _P_ _lease_ don’t laugh,” El begs, looking just absolutely _tortured_ in that way that only teen girls and Morrissey are especially good at. 

Max remains wordless, but nods. 

“It’s about Mike,” she all but groans, wishing for something to fall on her head and just strike her dead _right there_.

“Wheeler?! Did he do something to you? That mother-”

“What?! No! No, what would he even have done?” El shakes her head to stop that train of thought. “No, it’s just...on the first day we kind of... _bumped into each other_? It was in the hall, and it was just really embarrassing, and I want to pretend it never happened. That’s it.”

“Wait, we’ve been in school for almost a month now, why would that be-” Max begins, then comprehension dawns on her face, followed by an absolute shit-eating grin (much to El’s continued mortification). “Oh. My. God. _Oh my god!_ You _like_ him! You totally do. Holy shit.”

“I do _not_! I don’t even know him!”

“So you have a crush,” Max laughs.

“You said you wouldn’t laugh!” El has never felt so desperately exposed in her life, not even that time she fainted trying to dissect a frog and her _sixth grade_ crush was one of the boys who helped drag her lifeless body to the nurse’s office.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Max has stopped laughing, but the smirk on her face is still very much there. “That’s just... _adorable_ , Ellie.”

“I’m literally never telling you anything _ever_ again.”

El wants to both smother herself with a pillow (for obvious reasons) and squeal in delight because she just realized that she’s never had a friend (no, friend _s_ —plural—if her instincts are right and Max is about to totally spill to Will) that she can be so mortifyingly candid with and joke about things like this and not feel like she just has to _withhold_. Because after a while that just feels like you’re physically holding your breath underwater and, to be honest, El isn’t even really good at swimming in general.

Needless to say, her instincts are correct.

“No fucking way,” Will is looking at her in wide-eyed amusement from his place perched on top of one of the art tables, legs swinging back and forth.

“Mrrrgph,” is all that can be heard from El as she now has her face buried in her hands.

“Come on, El, it’s really not that bad! Mike is a _lovely_ boy,” Max is 50% teasing, 50% serious (she is genuinely _friends_ with him, after all).

Will snorts. “You sound like my mom.”

“You guys are literally not helping,” El whines, looking glum with her chin now resting on her two fists.

“Um, well if it makes you feel any better, he _is_ single.”

That’s all it takes for Max to dissolve into hysterics, with Will eventually joining in and El ultimately groaning as she covers her face with her hands again (and if a rogue giggle or two slips out over the absurdity of it all, they don’t have to know).

 

* * *

 

Two weeks pass and little changes. Thankfully the _Mike_ topic isn’t brought up again explicitly, but it’s fairly obvious that Max told Lucas about her... _situation_ when she nudges him in the cafeteria one afternoon and he quickly vacates his seat, forcing El to take his open spot that Mike will inevitably slide in next to whenever he arrives.

For a day or two it’s uneventful, sitting next to him. She keeps her arms and legs inside the vehicle to avoid even _accidentally_ brushing against him and enthusiastically contributes to group conversation, most likely to prevent side discussions breaking off, leaving her to engage with Mike directly or leave him on an island all by himself.

But then it inevitably happens. Will is spending lunch working on an art project and the table splits almost naturally, Lucas and Dustin embroiled in a fierce (but stupid, _always_ stupid) debate that Max is forced to mediate and El and Mike just... _there_.

_Don’t say something dumb, don’t say something dumb, don’t say someth-_

“Are you... _sweating_?” El blurts, and has half the mind to barge down to the station herself and ask her dad to release their most dangerous criminal and give him the exact coordinates of her locker.

The blush on Mike’s face is immediate. “Oh, uh...yeah. Kinda gross, huh? I hope I didn’t, like, drip on your food, or anything.”

She’s still absolutely _fucking_ mortified, but he’s also kind of endearingly adorable about it.

“No, I mean, it’s fine, I just- do you have gym or something? I thought juniors only had it first or last period.”

 _What_ is this conversation? Her brain is honestly screaming at her at this point, and if it were any other day she’d already have her forehead on the table, eyes diligently studying the cafeteria tile as if she were about to be quizzed on it.

“Oh, no. I’m actually on the, uh... _basketball_ team?” He says it like it’s a question, like he’s almost asking her for permission to be on the basketball team, and she wants to melt right there.

Sure, be on the basketball team, hit me with your car, literally do _whatever_ you want. He’s all boyish and shy, which is quite frankly hilarious because he has to be at least 6’2” and 90% just _limbs_.

“Oh wow! That’s cool,” she’s nodding now ( _why can’t she stop nodding?_ ).

He shrugs, face shining with modesty and nervous fingers picking at his cold fries. “We practice during school sometimes. Gets me out of gym class, at least.”

Things go smoother from there, casual banter and an absolute _lack_ of ever addressing their day one mishap as it just gets further and further behind them. And Max and Will refuse to stop teasing her because now it’s not just a crush, she _likes_ him. But it’s not really until two Fridays later that she realizes just how much.

There’s some kind of pre-season basketball game, the type of thing where the team just plays against itself which El understands even _less_ than when it’s a regular game (Hop is more of a baseball guy), but the Party talks about going as if it’s an absolute. And while El is nothing if not supportive, she doesn’t quite get it based on _how_ Mike talks about his basketball career.

She learns soon enough that he was being very, very modest. It turns out that he not only plays, but _starts_ . On the A team. And she’s not a “jersey chaser,” or any other variation of similar terms she’s heard thrown around their school (because, really, who from bumblefuck Hawkins, Indiana is going pro in _any_ sport besides crushing beer cans on their foreheads at the quarry?), but he’s actually _really_ good.

Oh. _Oh._

So, naturally, she’s mesmerized the whole time, much to Will and Max’s delight, Lucas’s amusement, and Dustin’s ignorance (he’s started secretly making out with some cheerleader lately, so that’s pretty much all his eyes are on) and sometimes when there are time outs or foul shots or other pauses in play (because it’s just an informal “fun game,” despite the fact that four boys have already used it as an excuse to try to fight on the court) they’ll catch each other’s eye and wave, y’know, like friends totally do.

Then after it’s over they’re all smushed in a booth at Benny’s, legs overlapping and arms reaching across the table for fries, onion rings, anything they can get their hands on. It feels right, El feels _warm_ and it’s not just because she’s sandwiched so tightly between Will and Mike that she honestly may stop breathing any second now (and _not_ just because of Mike’s proximity, she swears). She’s at the end of her milkshake now, slurping with abandon to the extent that she can barely hear the mindless chatter around her—including Mike saying her name a few times, quieter than the rest of their table (too quiet to grab her attention, actually). So instead he opts for tapping her lightly—3 times—on the back of the hand she has resting on the table, causing her to 1) finally come up for air and 2) feel like that hand has been struck by lightning (but if it has, then how is she alive right now? Maybe she’s not…).

“Hm?”

His face is so close that she shivers and wants to die on the spot (if only that had been a stronger lightning bolt) because there’s no way the boys on either side of her couldn’t, like, totally feel it. 

“Do you need a ride home?”

She doesn’t know why his volume is so low, it’s not like he hasn’t driven her places before—well, when Will isn’t available, that is—but she doesn’t want to question it or make him feel uncomfortable, and for some reason the moment feels like fragile glass.

“Sure,” she shrugs, mirroring his volume.

She’s mentally begging herself to play it cool, but the reality is that her insides are jelly and her mouth is dry and, again (she can’t stress this enough), his face is literally _right there_. They all go their semi-separate ways (Lucas with Max, Dustin with Will) and it’s not until they’re on the road that El speaks directly to him again.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me you were actually good?!” She bursts, and the look on her face is incredulous, but more amused than angry with him (never that). 

“I don’t know,” he’s laughing, shrugging with his hands still on the steering wheel, 10 and 2 like they’re supposed to be.

“Well,” she shakes her head, lightly flicking him on the forearm. “ _Now_ it makes sense why your asshole dad bought you a car for being on the team.”

Oh yeah, they’ve talked about stuff _like that_ , too, enough so that they can even joke about it (sometimes, other times not so much).

“Shut _up_ ,” he teases, mostly keeping his eyes on the road, but glancing at her out of the corner of his eye maybe once, twice...multiple times. “...You really thought I was good?”

Now his tone has shifted back to boyish softness, and El isn’t sure which part of him she likes better. Or maybe it’s just _all of it_ that she likes. All of it in a way that’s so overwhelming it makes her think that her heart may fare better in a bigger chest.

“Would I have yelled at you just now if I didn’t?” She’s trying to joke, but she’s softened, too, and they both just stay silent for a while.

“Well, this is me,” she says once he’s pulled into her driveway, trying not to cringe (like, _no_ _shit_ it’s you).

Mike just laughs. It’s awkward and _soft_ , just like him.

El unbuckles her seatbelt, but still just sits. And there’s a _moment_ , she _swears_ there is. A moment so thick and aggressively felt that if Will were there he could reach out and grab it and sculpt it into something (El hopes whatever he’d sculpt would get an A).  

“Um...well, bye Mike!” The mood shifts back immediately and El suddenly feels like she’s suffocating in there.

“Bye, El. See you Monday,” Mike responds, still soft as ever, smiling in a way that makes her feel like she has to get the hell out of there or her skin will melt clean off and that would just be _really_ embarrassing.

She hops out, bouncing up to her front door, but makes sure to stop on the porch, turning back and offering a wave that she hopes is cute (can waves be cute??).

He waves back like she knew he would and she turns inside feeling like she just finished a half marathon (she _needs_ to ask Lucas how the hell he does it).

Things seem to shift after that night, and who knew all it took was learning that Mike is _good at basketball_ (maybe basketball isn’t so stupid after all)? She feels silly and giddy and mortified and like she wants to go back to eating lunch in the library again.

But she doesn’t, and Mike is walking down the hallway looking like the fucking _sun_ —seriously, he’s wearing a yellow sweater and everything, and it looks so soft that El wants to bury her face in it in an entirely normal and platonic way—and if their walking schedules just so happen to sync up so that they’re going to the cafeteria at the same time, it’s purely coincidence.

She nudges him with her elbow in lieu of a hello, and he nudges back, but says “hi” anyway (because of course he does, he’s an angel) and they slide into their seats at lunch like it’s where they’re meant to be forever (which sounds gross if she thinks about it for too long, but kind of romantic if she doesn’t).

There’s not much besides small talk before the rest of the Party approaches, seemingly unaware of the change lingering at their table. But this day’s conversation takes a particularly interesting turn as they catch the tail end of whatever the hell Dustin is talking about with a degree of passion he only reserves for girls, Star Wars, or quantum physics.

“—but would it really be so bad if _I_ just asked _her_?” Dustin nearly whines. “Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be, anyway?” 

Max punches him on the shoulder and he acts hurt for the theatrics, though El knows from being on the receiving end enough times that they literally might as well be butterfly kisses with how featherlight they are.

“There’s no way it’s ‘ _supposed to be_ ,’ numbnuts!” She rolls her eyes. “Also it’s not about the gender, it’s about the _power dynamics_.”

They’re still going back and forth like canaries and now Will and Lucas have joined in, Will mostly just for fun and Lucas mostly just to support his girlfriend. Mike is simply observing in amusement while El tries to follow, her eyes darting from friend to friend to friend to friend like she’s no longer in the school cafeteria, but instead inside a pinball machine.

“Um, back up!” El calls out, voice surprisingly commanding (she can be when she wants to be, she just doesn’t want to be...often).

They stop, Will catching his breath while the other three look mildly perturbed at being interrupted (likely because good-natured arguments are how they burn off their various frustrated energies—when Max isn’t sawing things in shop or Lucas isn’t running 5-minute miles or Dustin isn’t working on drama club sets, that is).

“What the hell are you all even talking about?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Mike cringe, which only adds to her confusion. It’s been a _long_ time since she’s felt out of the loop at this point, and she doesn’t like it one bit. But before she can feel involuntary tears start burning the backs of her eyeballs at being left out, Will speaks.

“It’s about the homecoming dance.” He shrugs.

Oh. She knows those. Indianapolis had those. And, huh, whaddya know, it is homecoming time (she should’ve realized the pretty dresses on display at the mall when she and Max went last weekend weren’t just out there for shits).

“Oh,” she shrugs then, too. “So what’s the big deal?”

It’s Dustin who speaks up now, making sure to sigh first for good measure. 

“Hawkins has this _thing_ —it’s dumb, really—where the athletes are all presented at the dance so they all have dates and _they_ ask their dates even if it means it’s, like, a Sadie Hawkins type thing, I guess. So, uh...Liz hasn’t mentioned it yet.”

 “Ha! Sadie _Hawkins_ ,” Lucas laughs to no one in particular (he’s not helping ease Dustin’s mind).

But El’s mind is already off Dustin’s plight, too, unfortunately. _Liz_? Who the hell is Liz? (Sorry, Dustin.) All she can think about is _“athletes all have dates and they_ ask _their dates”_ and all she knows is that there’s a whole 6’2” of athlete sitting right next to her that hasn’t mentioned it. Not even once. Not even when they were _alone_ _in his car._ And now Will his staring at her because he _obviously_ knows exactly what she’s thinking (which is annoying).

“People always start talking about it this early,” Will shrugs in a covert attempt to comfort her. “It’s dumb.”

“So dumb,” Max rolls her eyes, not even privy to _why_ Will is saying what he’s saying. “There aren’t even posters up yet!”

“This one mega-horny senior couple literally started preparing for it _last May_ just to one-up everybody,” Lucas scoffs.

But El isn’t really hearing any of it. She knows she’s irrational for being hurt, but then again, who _else_ is Mike going to take? It’s that thought that really stings, the thought of him going with someone else. She’s easily his closest female friend, _maybe_ besides Max (solely based on time knowing each other), but she’s obviously going with Lucas anyway _and_ she’s the type who would 100% step on Mike’s feet on purpose if they tried to dance. Does he have a secret life?? Has he been hiding something from them this _whole time_? Do they all know this about him but her?

She doesn’t wait up for him to walk out of the caf and she opts to skip again like she did so many weeks ago, convincing Will and Max to hang out on the football bleachers instead of being holed up in the art room for once (or worse, actually going to class). 

She relishes the feel of the cold metal through her jeans and coat, closing her eyes and turning her face to the soft autumn sun to drink it in. Will pokes her on the cheek, breaking the peace.

“What, William?” She responds, but makes no move to turn her head or open her eyes.

“So, homecoming, huh?”

He plops down next to her, Max following suit on the bleacher beneath theirs.

“Not in the mood,” El sighs as if she’s suddenly _zen_ now and has ascended to an astral plane devoid of school dances or feelings or people named Mike in general.

“You can’t just monopolize our free period because of your life crisis and declare you’re _not in the mood_ ,” Max rolls her eyes and laughs, yanking on El’s forearm.

She finally opens an eye before sighing and sitting upright.

“Are _you_ going to homecoming, Max?” El raises an eyebrow.

“I mean, duh,” Max shrugs. “But Lucas and I have also been dating since, like, beginning of sophomore year.”

 “Look,” Will puts a placating hand on her knee, but it just feels cold through the rough fabric of her jeans. “I’m sure if _someone_ is planning to ask you, _someone_ will.”

He’s looking at her pointedly, but Max just snorts.

“Ya, and we all know that _someone_ is Mike Whe-”

“Max!”

El has a hand clamped over Max’s mouth as if her glaringly big crush on Mike isn’t wholly apparent to all of their friends and wholly invisible to the entire rest of the school (just like they all are, in general, for the most part as far as El’s concerned). But, truth be told, ever since her dad told her about how his old apartment was bugged that one time, she feels increasingly paranoid about it, like there’s a particularly gossip-heavy janitor trying to bug the bleachers and get the inside scoop only to expose everyone’s secrets during the morning announcements (ok, surely there would be worse secrets than _this_ if that were to happen, but still, she would just...spontaneously combust).

“El, dial it back,” Max rolls her eyes, trying to throw a littered straw wrapper at her then watching as it pitifully only makes it an inch before falling through the bleachers. “It’s not like Mike has some secret double life girlfriend. Because I _know_ that’s what you’re thinking.”

“It’s not what I’m thinking,” El mutters, but she can’t meet Max’s eyes, one hand absentmindedly playing with her jacket zipper

“Oh my god,” Will snorts from where he’s now lying on his back across the bleacher bench, eyes still pointed towards the sky. “You totally are. That’s _so_ embarrassing.”

El groans. If these two weren’t her _best friends_ (and not just her _school_ friends), she would literally want to disappear off the face of the earth. She still kind of does.

“Cool, I’m done coming to you two with my problems forever.”

“Lucky for you, we’re clairvoyant,” Will shrugs.

Max just snorts again. “Clairvoyant? More like, you’re totally fucking _obvious_ , El.”

“Good talk,” El deadpans. “I feel so reassured.”

“Don’t worry, El,” Max starts. “Y’know what they say—' _if you build it, they will come’_ —and, welp, you _built_ it, alright, so now Wheeler’s gonna-" 

“Max!”

Her own screech is the last thing she hears before the bell rings, and she truly can’t remove herself from that conversation fast enough. She loves her friends, and all, but sometimes…

 _Yeah_.

The rest of the day, thankfully, goes off without a hitch and soon enough she’s back home with her soaps and a carton of ice cream (she stopped by Melvald’s on her walk home—turning down Will’s usual ride and bolting before Mike could even _offer_ —for some Neapolitan, asking Joyce not to rat her out to her dad for spoiling dinner. She just winked) and emotional plight. Barely over two months ago she had no friends, now she not only has friends, but a _big fat crush_ on a boy who seemingly is not asking her to the homecoming dance. On one hand, she’ll still have her friends even if she looks like a giant dweeb alone at the dance (because she’d rather lick a rusty nail than say yes to one of the meatheads who throw haphazard paper planes at her in class bearing particularly vulgar—not to mention nonsensical...you literally physically _cannot_ put _that_ in _there_ —notes about how they’d like to take her on a “date”), but on the other, y’know, still looking like a loser.

It could be worse, she guesses. _Maybe_.

When she gets to school the next morning, Mike is waiting at her locker and Will immediately makes himself scarce. She curses how her heart jumps involuntarily at the sight of him—corduroy pants and a rugby shirt that would make him look like the world’s biggest ( _cutest_ ) nerd if not for the Hawkins High basketball hoodie on top of it—because she’s supposed to be _irritated_ at him, dammit (without ever actually communicating this to him, naturally). Also his hair looks slightly damp, like he may have just gotten out of the shower or- _nope_ , not mentally going there.

She shakes her head like a wet dog (she may be emotionally distraught, but she’s still seventeen and _human_ ).

“...Hi?” she greets him apprehensively.

“Um, hi!”

He seems to jump at her presence as if he wasn’t literally waiting for her _at her locker_ , not to mention that he’s wringing his hands in a way she knows he’s prone to when nervous.

“Is everything alright...?”

She never sees Mike in the mornings, she knows he has AM basketball conditioning now that the season is getting closer, plus his locker might as well be on the opposite side of the galaxy.

“I just, uh- are you gonna be in the cafeteria today for lunch?” He just...blurts it out.

“Um, yes?” Where else would she be? She almost wants to laugh, but she’s far too confused.

He visibly relaxes at that, brushing his hair out of his eyes (El wants to do that, too, she’s so close she could just-).

“Cool,” he punctuates the word with a nod.

“Cool,” El finally does laugh, now.

“Well, uh, locker,” is all Mike says before jogging off, leaving El somehow even _more_ perplexed than yesterday.

The morning passes _so painfully slow_ , her whole body vibrating in nervous anticipation for _whatever the hell_ is about to happen at lunch today. She should probably be a bit more concerned than she is—Mike could pull, like, a Carrie on her, for all she knows. She shakes that thought away and tries to focus on Pride and Prejudice, but she’s realistically read the same sentence about 8 times at this point.

Next thing she knows, the bell is ringing for lunch and she’s all but _sprinting_ to the caf, realizing Mike is nowhere to be found in the halls where they usually meet up. _Weird_ , but whatever.

The sight that greets her is _easily_ nothing she would’ve expected in a million, _zillion_ years, stopping her right in her tracks as other kids still mill around her, sometimes bumping or jostling her in their quest to be early in the lunch line. They can _wait_ . Because El is currently experiencing literally the greatest thing that has ever happened—probably _will_ ever happen—in her entire seventeen years of life. 

A long banner stretches across the dingy room, the letters on it crowded and crooked and different colors in some spots where you could tell the person making it ran out of paint. But the message is clear as day.

 _W_ (ok, the W was scribbled over) _HOMECOMING, EL HOPPER?_  

And standing under it, looking more awkward than she’s ever seen him, is none other than Mike Wheeler (which makes sense, really, as he’s one of the few people in the school who could most likely hang it that high without a ladder). So she does what any reasonable person would do—cries. Oh, and runs, definitely runs.

What she doesn’t see is Mike’s _complete_ panic at her reaction, face falling in time with the corner of the banner, causing it to flutter to the ground pathetically (he knew he should’ve used fucking duct tape instead of fun-tak). She also doesn’t see him trying to follow after her, weaving through all their classmates who are “ _just trying to eat lunch over here, man_.”

Her feet take her to the art room and the only other person in there is Jeff Masterson, some kid Will has been hanging out with a lot lately, so she only really knows him that way, but he seems nice enough and takes El’s hint and vacates the room (can a girl just cry in _peace_?).

But before she gets to start round 2 of her tears, the door is bursting open, and in comes the exact source of just why she’s so emotional.

“Mike-” she starts weakly, but he doesn’t give her the chance to say anything else.

“El! Fuck, I’m so sorry. I figured you liked grand gestures and stuff because of all the tv and movies I know you like, but oh god, you’re probably so embarrassed right now. I’m _so fucking_ sorry. I’m such a colossal idiot. I mean, for all I know you don’t even wanna go with me and now I just put you on the spot like that and-”

“Mike,” El tries to cut in, but he’s still going.

“-I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable and I probably completely did and I don’t blame you if you don’t even want to be in the same _room_ as me right now-”

“Mike!” She shouts, finally bringing his rambling to a screeching halt. “Stop talking.”

He’s subtly taking breaths after his, quite frankly, _impressive_ streak (but also, aren’t basketball players supposed to be in shape, what happened there?).

“That was the most,” El starts, and Mike looks the most terrified he’s ever been. “- _romantic_ thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.”

“Seriously?” His face lights up with hope and downright childish wonder.

“It was like a movie,” she says softly, a pink blush overtaking her cheeks.

“Like a _good_ movie or, like, a horror movie?”

“Shut up,” El rolls her eyes, laughing.

They’re closer now, El sitting on the table and Mike right in front of her when he reaches down, loosely playing with her fingers.

“So, uh...is that a yes, or-?”

“I’ll think about it,” She shrugs, but there’s a distinct sparkle in her eye and she’s stilled his hand, now intertwining their fingers.

“For how long?” Mike asks, all eagerness and raised eyebrows.

His breath is on her face and _when did they get so close?_

She strokes her chin thoughtfully with her free hand. “Hm, maybe...10 seconds.”

“10 seconds?” He furrows his brows.

“I need time to think,” her voice is a whisper now, she’s practically just talking right into his mouth and his lips are really just _right there_ , looking _soft_ and pink as ever.

“ _Oh_ ” is all Mike really gets out, and El is practically swallowing the word because she just _goes for it_ , kissing him full on the mouth and it definitely lasts more than 10 seconds, but more importantly she’s seeing stars behind her eyelids and, yes, his lips are as soft as they look and _holy shit she’s kissing him_.

They finally separate after what could be weeks, _years_ even (breathing? Trash) and all El says is “yes.”

“Wha-?” Mike is still in a daze, his mouth half open—looking well-kissed, thankyouverymuch—and eyes slowly blinking as if he needs to figure out what universe he’s in right now.

“Yes. To homecoming. I want to go with you, obviously,” El says definitively, all business, gently tugging and twisting his hoodie strings.

The smile that splits his face rivals the sun (how does he always do that?) and after that there’s really not much more she can do than kiss him, it’s truly the only conceivable way to proceed.

And then in a few more weeks they go to homecoming, and El finally has a photo of them hanging smack-dab over the fireplace like she always imagined it’d be, and while it’s not from prom ( _yet_ ) it’s even better, she thinks.

 

**_END_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I’m the architect of my own demise and all, but holy shit writing this is so much lmao. Also, coherent timelines? Never met her, either. But anyway—look at those cuties.


	19. Hot for Teacher

She gives herself two whole seconds to wallow in embarrassment before she’s up and brushing herself off, now not quite level (because whoa, he’s fucking _tall_ ) with her fellow crash test dummy and she can really get a look up at him and, uh, _wow_ . He’s not traditionally _high school hot_ , like a movie heartthrob, or anything, but he’s definitely pretty, _beautiful_ , even.

“Sorry,” she finally speaks (squeaks, more like), realizing she’s been standing there like a moron for far too long (but he’s still just standing there, too, so _ha_ ). “I’m kind of a mess right now.”

“All good,” he laughs, brushing some of his hair out of his eyes and it takes everything in El to not just melt into a puddle right then and there. “I’m kind of a telephone pole, so I get it.”

El laughs a little too boisterously at that—quite frankly—poor attempt at a joke. She notices his hoodie for the first time—Hawkins High basketball. _Huh_. Maybe basketball isn’t so dumb after all.

“I’m El, by the way!” She interjects lamely, desperate to keep their interaction going (since when does she even _care_?).

“Mike,” he offers his hand and the only way El can describe it is _warm_.

Their handshake is a bit too brief for her liking, but holding a virtual stranger’s hand in the middle of the hallway is probably not the most socially adjusted thing to do, especially not on your first day. 

“And I meant soft _ball_...before. I was thinking about, uh, joining the softball team earlier. I have a tendency to just say what I’m thinking out loud sometimes. Other people don’t usually get caught in the crossfire,” she rambles, trying to explain her mortification away.

 _Lame_.

“Ah...well, softball tryouts aren’t ‘til the spring.” Mike says and he winks, literally fucking _winks_ and El’s sure she’s as red as her favorite nail polish (her dad got it for her 13th birthday, the color choice was a total shot in the dark and even though the red is so deep it stains her nail beds for weeks after it’s chipped off, she _loves_ it).

“Guess I have a lot of time to practice then,” El laughs nervously in a way that just says _‘please kill me.’_

“Good luck,” Mike laughs, lingering maybe a second too long (or is El just imagining things?) before turning on his heel and walking in the opposite direction.

Then the bell rings, thank god, and El has never been so happy to go to a class in her entire seventeen years on this green earth.

She tries to put the experience behind her _and_ commend herself for at least trying to salvage the situation (though she’s pretty sure all it did is convince him she’ll be the softball team’s most _enthusiastic_ recruit), but that’s aggressively short-lived. Like... _half-a-day later_ short-lived.

Because now it’s the end of the day and she’s walking into orientation for the tutoring program she signed up for and, lo and behold, there he is. She’s not _annoyed_ , per se, more or less just exasperated. _Does she want to strangle him or straddle him_? She still doesn’t know, but it’s also only day one...good god.

She approaches the table he’s already sitting at, flashing her own index card bearing the same table number before plopping down and leaving a chair in between them.

“What are you in for?” Mike quirks an eyebrow (annoyingly attractive). “Wait. Don’t tell me—you want softball tips.”

El feels her eyes rolling back into her skull. “Are you _still_ on that?”

“It was funny!” He’s fully laughing now and El wants to pout even though she knows he’s not laughing _at_ her.

 _Jocks_ , she mentally huffs.

“Anyway,” she purses her lips at him, unable to fight the way the right side quirks up a bit. “I’m here for science help. That was easily my weakest subject at my old school.”

Mike nods contemplatively, his eyes poring over the papers she’s handed him—copies of old tests, all marked in red with grades at the top and some featuring other scrawled notes from past teachers. “Oh yeah, all these...94s. You sure were slacking, huh?”

She looks sheepish. “It’s dumb, I know. I’m just trying to go Ivy and, well, I already chose this over private school, so…gotta take help wherever I can get it.”

“Glad I’m your desperation choice,” there he goes _winking_ again. “But no, I get it. I mean, I don’t really think I’m set for life because I’m a member of the _Hawkins High_ basketball team in bum-fuck Indiana, obviously.”

“So what you’re saying is that you’re _really good_ at basketball, huh? Just bragging, really,” El teases. 

“More like _'I'm a stringbean and capitalized on anything that would get me exempt from gym class and eating a face-full of dirt every other day,’_ ” he laughs, brushing his hair out of his eyes again.

 _Hm_ , so maybe not a _typical_ jock, then.

“Noted. So I’ve deduced that you’re a science nerd. But what do _you_ get from this?”

“What? I can’t just be here out of the pure goodness of my own heart?” Mike puts a hand over his chest, playing offense.

El giggles ( _giggling?_ ), light and airy. “Sure you can, but, um, that’s _literally_ not the point of this program.”

“I need some help in English. With poetry, specifically.”

For the first time since she’s met him (which, okay, has only been, like, 3 hours) he looks embarrassed and bashful. _Cute_.

“So no Shakespearean romances in your lifetime?”

Is she _flirting_? Who _is_ she?

Mike grimaces. “Don’t they all die anyway?”

“Not the point,” El rolls her eyes. “ _But_ lucky for you, I happen to be an expert.”

“Lucky for me, indeed,” Mike raises an eyebrow, a pretty blush across his cheeks.

El finally leans down to grab a notebook, and if either of them notice that their pinkies are touching on the tabletop by the time their _tutoring hour_ is over, neither says anything.

 

**_END_ **


	20. Working for the Weekend

“Oh, have you?” Hop raises an eyebrow at her _strictly business_ tone.

“I want a job,” she nods firmly.

“A job? Huh.”

She can tell her dad is just waiting for her to elaborate, not wanting to say the wrong or discouraging thing. He’s good like that, sometimes (okay, _fine_ , a lot of times).

“Yeah, I mean, today was the involvement fair and it was cool and all, but then Josie was talking about her job at the mall and it got me thinking that having a job could be good, I mean, it would definitely be nice to have some extra cash,” she shrugs as the words just fall out of her mouth.

“Okay, one, who is Josie? And, two, you do realize the mall is way out of town, Ellie?”

El huffs, rolling her eyes like the absolute _teen girl_ she is. “Josie is a girl I sat with at lunch today and _obviously_ I wouldn’t be working at the mall, dad. I was thinking maybe...Benny’s?”

“You wanna work at Benny’s?” Hopper’s eyebrow is practically melding with his hairline.

“I mean, yeah, we love Benny, I love the food, it’s close enough that I could walk,” El shrugs. “Why not?”

“Guess there’s no argument there,” he shrugs. “Want me to put in a good word?”

“Thank you thank you _thank you_ ,” El all but _screeches,_ rushing over to give him a bear hug while he pretends to be disgruntled about it (but eventually just pats her on the head).

It’s after she finally peels herself away from her dad that he speaks again, almost looking a bit misty eyed.

“Y’know, I’m really proud of you, kid.” 

“ _Dad_ ,” El teases. “Are you gonna cry?”

Hopper huffs. “Don’t you have homework to do, or something?”

She rolls her eyes and laughs, muttering something about _“it’s literally just the first day”_ before traipsing off to her room to change into sweats and curl up with a magazine, hoping to absorb any tips about crimping hair that it has to offer.

 

* * *

 

One week later, she’s the proud owner of a new job at Benny’s, wringing her hands in nervous anticipation as she walks in for her first day. He gives her a gruff, but affectionate nudge on the shoulder before handing over her new apron and glossy nametag, which she spends probably longer than necessary putting on.

Because the truth is, she’s _terrified_. This is her first ever job and she’s seen half of the staff already during the vast number of times she and her dad have been here as patrons, but things are always different from the outside looking in and the one thing she wants more than to not royally fuck this up is for people here to not absolutely _hate_ her. But again, she’s never served before.

Her first shift is a double, giving her ample time for training, and it’s on a Monday because thank god for private schools and their multitude of random church holidays, so there are no ridiculous crowds. Needless to say, she’s off to a rough start, no one being outwardly mean, but nobody really bothering to take her under their wing besides Phyllis—an older woman with hair that has long since turned white—and while she’s undeniably sweet, she’s also undeniably _slow_ in a way that make the palms of El’s hands itch. She doesn’t even realize a shift change is happening until Phyllis is no longer by her side (and it takes her a while to notice that she wasn’t coming, honestly, she’s _that_ slow), and she’s manning a four-top completely _alone_.

“H-hi!” She attempts to perk up despite her realization, flipping her order pad to a clean page. “How are you all?”

It’s just four women, middle-aged, they seem well-meaning enough. But she’s still scared _shitless_.

“We’re good, sweetie. We’re actually on a bit of a time crunch, so if we could order all at once that would be best,” one of the women says with a smile on that’s cloyingly sweet with Indiana fakeness, but she hasn’t been outwardly rude yet and that’s good enough for El.

El releases a breath and nods to indicate she’s ready before she remembers that she’s supposed to be leading the situation.

“Ready when you are.” Her laugh that follows is shaky with nervousness, her right hand pressing the pen so tightly to the pad that she may very well rip right through it.

El scribbles their orders with almost panicked urgency—four unsweetened iced teas, two Cobb salads (one no bacon!), a club sandwich with chicken soup instead of fries, and a French onion soup—before blurting out “ _I'llbebackwiththatsoon”_ and skittering away, trying to keep her footsteps even (but failing). She gets into the kitchen, practically gasping from the pressure of it all as though someone had been holding her underwater, and passes the ticket to Benny, who just laughs and tosses her an absentminded thumbs up. 

The events that follow all happen in rapid succession. The kitchen door bursts open behind her with a belated “excuse me” and she’s scared out of her wits, jumping like a startled cat and hitting the nearest thing, knocking over multiple stacks of red plastic glasses. Not to be dramatic, or anything, but El basically considers it _the cup collapse heard ‘round the world_. Thankfully, she notices that Benny and the other cooks are entirely unfazed. The other guest in the kitchen, however, not so much. It’s a boy and she has to strain to look up at him—he’s basically a whole head taller than her—and he’s _laughing_ , glancing between her and the cups with utter amusement.

El wants to note the quiet, unassuming _prettiness_ of him, but she doesn’t have time to because this is her first day, _dammit_ , and she’s not here to get starry-eyed over boys—not to mention boys that are literally laughing at her plight(?), ridiculous as the situation may be, she knows—who look like a hybrid of a storybook prince and gawky nerd stereotype (with better cheekbones than both, but _still_ ).

She finally huffs, crouching down to undo some of her damage (does the 5-second rule count? They’re cups…).

“Care to help?” She wants to narrow her eyes at him, but she’s also not trying to make enemies on day one, especially when it’s ultimately her fault.

He laughs, “Sorry.”

Then he’s kneeling down to her level, still basically taller than her even when he’s crouched at the knees, and helping her re-stack the cups.

“Y’know,” he laughs again. “Typically I’d expect _me_ to be the one knocking everything over.”

“Hm?” El questions, still primarily focused on cleaning up her mess.

“I mean, I’m all limbs, after all,” he shrugs, and El finally looks up at him and realizes he’s _trying to make her feel better_.

“Oh,” is all she can say.

“First day?” He quirks an eyebrow, nodding towards the now upright cups with a smirk.

“Understatement,” El sighs.

“Cool.” El doesn’t really understand why that’s cool, but she lets him continue anyway. “Well, I’m Mike.”

“El,” she smiles before turning her attention back to some of the cups that _didn’t_ hit the floor. “Well, _Mike_ , since you look bored, wanna help me get these iced teas?”

Neither of them would admit it if asked, but Mike basically takes her under his wing after that day, El considering it a steep step up from before (sorry, Phyllis). Because, to be honest, El is not _great_ at serving, though she knows it all comes down to time and practice—literally, she practices at home, sometimes with Hopper, sometimes with herself (it’s only embarrassing if she thinks about it for too long). She tries to convince the girls at school to play along, but they all—including El—immediately deem it _way too weird_.

Over time she meets the rest of the staff and becomes a part of the kinship that only working in food service can afford (read: collective shared misery) and learns a lot. There are a few older college kids (some kid named Steve who Mike reveals used to date his older sister), a bunch of kids their age and a bit younger, then the seasoned veterans like Phyllis. It’s kind of incestuous, she notices, sometimes likening it to being in the Real World house (which she secretly watched even though Hop told her it would “ _rot her brain"_ ). First there’s Cassie and Marco, who always conveniently take breaks at the same time to “smoke” (aka make out) during their slow shifts, then also Jessica and Annie, who always play footsie during staff meetings and have started driving each other to and from work when they share shifts, and even Joe and Liza, part of the _young at heart_ faction trying to fill the romantic void (and probably _other voids_ —El shudders at the thought).

It’s a lot to take in, but hearing diner drama quickly becomes the highlight of the girls’ lunch table chatter every Monday, and, quite frankly, El’s just happy to have something of her own to contribute rather than popping into everyone else’s conversation.

And Mike becomes one of her best friends. They swap stories of their respective schools, Mike always listening in wide-eyed wonder as El pulls back the curtain on the mysteries of private school (sometimes she plays along and reinforces his misguided beliefs about them, solely for her own amusement). They’re attached at the hip when it comes to Benny’s. But then again, there’s your _work friends_ and your _real friends_.

“El!” Annie comes up behind her during a particularly slow shift and El is grateful that she no longer scares as easily as she did on that first day.

“Annie! What’s up?”

Annie leans in conspiratorially, lowering her voice solely for dramatic effect since there’s literally no one at any of the surrounding tables. “Party at my house Friday?”

“Uh, party?” El furrows her brows (work friends vs real friends, remember?).

“Yeah, strictly Benny’s thing!” Annie shrugs. “My parents are away for the weekend.”

El gets it, now. She and Annie have become close enough work acquaintances to have shared personal enough stories during long, unforgiving shifts, and El knows that Annie’s friends and family don’t know about her _situation_ with Jess and she really isn’t sure how they’d react. In a way, work friends are great for this. They’re like a vault separate from everything else.

“Cool!” El nods.

She’s been to one other high school party before, at her old school. It turned out to be a bust, but ultimately nothing bad happened (to her, anyway, she can’t speak for that senior boy who got a tooth knocked out), so she considered it a success.

Annie scribbles her address down on El’s notepad before turning back towards her sole table.

It isn’t until later in her shift that El considers the paper again, folding and unfolding it from the place in her apron pocket just to have something to do with her idle hands. She’s working a double again (school had a half-day and she’ll be here ‘til late, but she doesn’t mind, because now she can finally afford a god damn crimper) and Mike clocked in about 20 minutes ago.

She’s on the break that Benny _insisted_ she take and Mike glances around the virtually empty diner before sliding onto the stool next to hers where she’s methodically eating her grilled cheese (she’s eaten waffles every shift for the past two weeks and Benny—and Mike, too, honestly—was practically _begging_ her to get something different).

“You going to Annie’s on Friday?” El says, half muffled as she gulps down a bite of food ( _cute_ ).

“Probably,” he shrugs. “I mean, only if you are.”

El ignores the extra _pump_ she feels in her chest—her heart is probably just about to stop from all the cheese, thanks Benny.

“Yeah, I want to! Sounds fun!”

“Sweet,” he says, cursing under his breath as the bell on the door dings and he realizes he has to _actually_ do his job. “Well, enjoy the grilled cheese.”

El just laughs through her full mouth, careful not to spray crumbs.

Needless to say, the girls at school are _very_ intrigued by the concept of this work party (probably about as intrigued as Mike is about private school) and have taken to teasing her about Mike _mercilessly_.

“If you don’t get _on that_ I’ll be severely disappointed in you,” Tish points an accusatory finger at her.

“Tish!” El cries, rubbing her face with her hands. “We’re just work friends! It, like, barely counts.”

“Sounds like the perfect alibi to me,” Meg-Anne shrugs, looking smug. “You guys hook up at this party, you never have to actually see him _in the wild_ if it’s weird.”

She huffs. “I’m not going to jeopardize my _livelihood_ just to kiss _some boy_.”

“One,” Krista rolls her eyes. “Calling it your _livelihood_ is a bit dramatic, when a week ago you were raving about how you could finally afford a _crimper_. And _two_ , I don’t think he’s just _‘some boy’_ to you at all, young Ellie.”

All El can do is pout. Sure, Mike is _cute_ (and friendly, and funny, and always offers her a ride home when they work the same shift even though she insists she can walk, and is, like, the nicest even when he thinks nobody is looking, which is when El thinks it counts the most), but she doesn’t even like to let herself linger on that thought, because, y’know, _work._ But as Josie has also pointed out, it’s not like she’s working “on fucking Wall Street, it’s just a diner.”

“El, don’t worry. I hooked up with one of our piercers and not only has it been _totally chill_ , he literally pierced my belly button for free,” Josie recounts, gesturing with her fry as she talks before popping it into her mouth.

This does little to ease El’s mind, obviously (though it does kind of make her wish Hop would let her get her belly button pierced).

 

* * *

 

 

Friday comes faster than she wants it to ( _since when?_ ) and, soon enough, she’s strolling into the Benny’s parking lot even though she didn’t even have a shift that day. The older staff have clocked in for the night, so everyone else just got off (including Mike, and El warms at the sight of him, because of course she does that now), coming to congregate near Annie’s car.

“K,” Annie clasps her hands together. “Everyone set on rides?”

There are various sounds in the affirmative, so she continues.

“Sweet, I’ll collect your fives at my house, please get there in one piece and remember the golden rule—no fucking drunk driving.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” Mike says, saluting ( _dork_ ), and then El is following him to his car and sliding into the passenger seat. 

The short ride there is filled with companionable verbal silence, El fiddling with the radio knobs until Mike finally jokingly slaps her hand away once she’s gone through 7 stations and shows no signs of stopping. She just laughs, risking to turn it back one more time to a song she knows they both like.

Then they’re at Annie’s, and it’s nothing like El’s first high school party (but it _is_ , however, Mike’s first high school party in general), no aggressively loud music thumping or couples already making out or keg stands or tensions brewing in a way that you _know_ just means a fight will break out later. They follow the noise to the kitchen, grabbing from random snacks and some swiped leftovers from Benny’s scattered on the counters before Annie informs them that the _real_ party is in the basement (because it’s easier to clean than the rest of the house, duh). And by “real party,” she just means the alcohol.

Mike offers to pay El’s five for reasons unknown to her, but she vehemently refuses, reminding him that he literally works at Benny’s to pay off his car and five bucks spent on El are five less towards that (he assures her it’s worth it and her heart annoyingly _jumps_ , but she still doesn’t budge).

While the party is devoid of keg stands, they still get into some typical high school party shenanigans. El and another girl from work, Tracy, end up being a pretty solid beer pong team and somewhere across the room she can hear some other kids playing a particularly raucous game with cards. She hasn’t seen Mike in a while, and she feels something akin to a pout grace her features before she shakes it away. El sticks to beer after that, her first cup of punch long forgotten (someone else probably ends up finishing it, anyway). 

It’s a few hours—and multiple drinks for all of them—later that someone suggests truth or dare, all of them forming a lopsided circle on the floor in giggly, drunk anticipation. El sees Mike roll his eyes next to her and she flicks him on the ear, laughing and telling him to lighten up—he pretends to be annoyed for a second before laughing himself (like she knew he would).

The game is all pretty tame—again nothing like parties on TV—to the extent that El almost rolls her eyes once it’s her turn, assuming they’ll ask her to run a lap around the basement or try to say the alphabet backwards (that she’d inevitably fail in her drunk state, but _still)._ Despite her mild vertigo (though she’s literally _sitting on the floor_ ) she perks up, obviously choosing “dare” as if it’s as easy as breathing.

“Hmm,” Jess purses her lips thoughtfully, taking a sip before speaking again. “I dare you...to kiss Wheeler.”

Suddenly El’s vertigo is _very_ , very real. She can honestly say she wasn’t anticipating that, not in the slightest. But, okay, it’s a dare, and she _refuses_ to back down from a dare. Maybe this isn’t the way she wanted to do this ( _wait, what_ ? Maybe that’s that ‘drunk mouths, sober thoughts’ thing, she guesses), but it could be worse. Getting up on her knees, she shuffles a bit closer to him on the carpet, generating a small _zap_ when she tentatively places her hands on Mike’s shoulders. She gulps and finally looks at his face, and it’s doing the weirdest thing—the parts of it that aren’t sporting a ridiculous blush have gone as pale as she’s ever seen him.

“ _Are you okay?”_ She mouths and can see him gulp before nodding and _this is it_ , she’s gonna do this thing and it’s not like the girls at school said and it’s _just a silly dare_ , but regardless, it’s happening. And her heart is fucking _pounding_ in her ears.

El starts to lean in…

...and then literally _pukes_. She has the courtesy to aim away from Mike _and_ off the rug they’re playing on, but it sobers the game up pretty quickly, even if El’s still definitely somewhat intoxicated.

“Fuck!” She screeches. “I’m so sorry!”

Despite her BAC, she still makes a solid effort to clean it up (food service skills, after all), and once that’s done—everyone’s vacated the basement anyway because it still definitely smells like puke which is kind of a giant mood-killer—Mike (who, thank _god_ , hasn’t had a drop to drink besides Sprite all night) is thrusting a water bottle in her hand and grabbing the other one. She says her goodbyes in a blur, relieved to be getting out of there even if she hasn’t verbalized it, and if vomiting on the floor wasn’t as sobering as a bucket of water over her head, the rush of cool outdoor air definitely is.

She shivers, but before Mike can offer his jacket, they’re in his car and it’s a few minutes before either of them speak.

“I’m sorry I almost puked on you,” she mutters, not totally able to look him in the eye (but she does glance over to see him white-knuckling the steering wheel).

Then he laughs—yes, _laughs_ —and it’s basically like music to her ears at this point.

“Do you hate me?”

“What?!” Mike practically crashes the car. “ _Hate_ you? Why would I do that?”

“Uh...almost kissing you made me vomit,” El rolls her eyes at herself in the window’s reflection, her words still slightly slurred. 

“Oh, well when you put it that way…” He laughs again. “No, El, I don’t hate you. You’ve just been drinking a lot, that’s all.”

“If you say so,” she sighs.

No one speaks for a few more minutes.

“Mike,” El starts, timidly. “I...don’t wanna go home yet. Can we just, idunno, drive around or something?" 

“Alright, then,” Mike nods as if he’s been tasked with the most important mission known to man, the tiniest of smiles on his face, before turning the radio up and making a left turn instead of the usual right.

They drive for hours, literally hours, and it’s a mix of silently bobbing their heads to the radio, babbling about everything and nothing, and El dozing off, but she perks up around 5am, finally feeling sober again.

“Milkshakes!” She blurts, scaring the shit out of Mike who assumed she was still asleep (not like he was staring at her earlier, or anything…).

“You want milkshakes?” He asks, bewildered.

“Yes, let’s get them! It’s still dark so it’s basically night, I know how weird you get about eating non-breakfast foods for breakfast,” she teases, poking him on the shoulder and finally back to her normal self.

“Milkshakes it is,” he laughs, making the short trip to Benny’s.

Benny is back in the diner at this point and exasperated to see them, so he just waves them behind the counter and tells them to get whatever the hell they want. It’s dead at this hour, save for a few overnight shifters, anyway. They do their best not to wreak too much havoc, Mike even cleaning up his microscopic milkshake spill despite not being on the clock ( _see_? Even nice when he thinks nobody is looking) then they’re back in the car and Mike is driving with determination set on his face.

“Mike, where are we- _oh_.”

The words are stopped in El’s throat because now they’re at the quarry and ahead of them is literally the most beautiful sunrise she’s ever seen. She slips out of the car, opting instead to sit on the hood (still warm and cozy, the perfect contrast to the autumn morning chill and the brain freeze she’s fighting off right now) and just assumes Mike will follow her lead. (He does, of course.)

“I haven’t looked at the sunrise in ages,” El admits. “This is nice.”

“Not a morning person, eh?” He jokes, earning a nudge from El before continuing. “But yeah, it is nice.”

El feels like she’s going to throw up, probably most likely because she’s dehydrated and has a stomach full of milkshake and beer, but probably also because of something else unrelated to food entirely. They’re close, she notices, and she scrunches her eyes tight—trying to reach down and desperately grab courage from somewhere, _anywhere_ , she thinks—before speaking next.

“Mike,” she nearly whispers.

And then he’s turning and she’s leaning in and he’s leaning in and _holy shit_ she could count his freckles, or eyelashes, or even the cracks on his lips from where they’re a little chapped, but why would she even want to _do_ that when there’s a much better option? But then he stops, hardly two inches from her face (and, more importantly, his mouth hardly two inches from _her mouth_ ) and El realizes why he’s probably feeling apprehensive right now.

“ _Mike_ ,” she whispers (being any louder is entirely unnecessary at this point). “It’s okay—I got a mint shake.”

And then he laughs and it’s the most glorious sound, but before she can revel in that _his_ mouth is on _hers_ first and they’re kissing! She wants to cry, his lips are _soft_ and gentle and a little dry and slightly cold from the shakes they’ve been drinking, but fit against her own like they were invented to and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened in her life, even if deep down she knows a mint milkshake isn’t _really_ a substitute for a toothbrush.

And when she tells the girls on Monday and sees Ashley sigh and slip Krista a $10 bill, she’s not even mad.

 

**_END_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Work friends vs real friends is an actual thing, don’t fight me on this. Also LMAO why did I make kissing someone who vomited cute??? Ignore me, truly.


	21. Into the Groove

“I want to get involved in stuff,” she shrugs.

“ _Stuff_?” Hop stands with his hands on his hips, proving that he gets just as much from El as she gets from him.

“Like debate team. Oh and dance club! Also yearbook for sure... _and_ student council, maybe?” She smiles up at him sheepishly as she finishes.

Hop releases a low whistle. “That’s a lot on your plate, Ellie.”

“I know, but, like, college apps will be here soon and I need to look good to schools, you know how important that is to me—plus all the girls I met today seemed nice, I think!”

“It’s your life, kid,” Hop shrugs. “Just how much is money is this gonna require?”

“Only dance club has fees, I swear! Oh, and I’ll probably eventually need a blazer for debate…” she trails off.

Her dad sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Just let me know what days you’ll be staying late at school. And if you seem the _slightest_ bit overloaded, you’re reconsidering.”

“Of course! Love you!” She pops over and gives her dad a peck on the cheek before retreating to her room to change into comfier clothes.

The next week passes in a bit of a blur of classes, tryouts, club orientations, lunch table discussions, and learning the ins and outs of just how much she can stretch the dress code and not get caught—though it’s mostly the other girls taking the lead while El just takes notes. So far, unnaturally colored hair is out (Josie tried her purple highlights last year and nearly got suspended, hence why she did a big chop before school was back in session), you can get away with rolling your skirt a few times as long as you readjust it whenever you walk past the front office, and you can have bright eye shadow or bright lips, but never both. To put it mildly, El is fascinated. To be honest, public school was kind of a lawless wasteland where nearly anything was fair game as long as you couldn’t see a genital, crack, or areola (male or female)—though court of public opinion was always in session, obviously, and public school kids can be _brutal_.

She also meets plenty more girls in her club meetings, all of varying friendliness and relatability. Dance club is the most interesting, with its tryouts lasting two days chock full of nerves and sore muscles. Multiple freshman girls cry, two of the captains fight, but, regardless, El still makes it. Hop catches her lying face down on the couch the Saturday after, groaning in pain, and has to shelf his laughter, instead opting to place two Aspirin on the coffee table and leave her to it.

Despite how much El throws herself into extracurriculars, nothing _truly_ of note happens until the following Wednesday. El is at lunch, minding her own business (first to the table for once, which feels embarrassingly gratifying for her, because, like, it’s just _the table_ now, where they always sit and El doesn’t need to wait to follow anyone’s lead to sit there), when Meg-Anne and Krista run over in a flurry of hair and plaid skirt and teenage enthusiasm before the latter slaps a neon piece of paper down on the table.

Krista is clearly about to start speaking before she looks around.

“-Wait...where are the rest?” She narrows her eyes.

“Dunno,” El shrugs. “I just got here.”

“ _Bitches_ ,” Krista swears under her breath. “Ruined our entrance.”

Meg-Anne rolls her eyes and slips into her usual seat, sighing and taking out her packed lunch.

El spots Tish, Josie, and Ashley approaching and raises an eyebrow, smirking. “Wanna go back out and try again?”

Krista just flips her off.

“ _Finally_ ,” Krista huffs before the girls even have a chance to sit down. 

“What crawled up your ass, Kris?” Josie laughs, teasing. “Forgot a tampon again? You know the nurse keeps stuff in her office.”

“Please,” Ashley rolls her eyes. “You know all Lister has in her office are pads the size of life rafts.”

“Um, that was one time, first of all. But anyway, no.”

Then, without speaking, she slides the neon flyer closer to the center of the table. Josie’s eyes light up, Tish gasps, and Ashley simply flicks her eyes over the piece of paper before turning her attention back to the magazine.

“Oh, a dance. Cool,” El nods.

“ _Cool_ ? Just _cool_?” Meg-Anne raises an eyebrow.

El doesn’t entirely get what the big deal is. Obviously there were dances at her old school, mostly just an excuse for some kid to spike the punch and everyone to pretend they’re drunk for a few hours, maybe even get a chance to feel up their date on the dance floor. She went to one freshman year and decided it wasn’t really her scene.

“Yes?” She furrows her brows at everyone’s reaction to _her_ reaction (besides Ashley, who’s still eyeballs-deep in some article about the dos and don’ts of body glitter application).

“This is a big deal, Ellie,” Tish assures her between chomping on a baby carrot.

“Ok, but I mean, no offense, I see you guys and everyone in our school every day. Don’t get me wrong, I love any excuse to look pretty, but…” She shrugs.

“Tsk tsk, you have so much to learn. This, my friend, is not just a _dance_ , it’s the annual back to school soiree. And every year we host it along with St. Joseph’s,” Josie explains.

“St. Joseph’s-” El looks confused before comprehension dawns on her face. “Oh... _oh_.”

_Boys._

Krista all but cackles at El’s reaction, nodding with a shit-eating grin on her face.

“You’re not wrong, El,” Ashley shrugs, barely even looking up from her magazine to prove _just_ how disinterested she is. “It truly isn’t even that serious.”

Josie huffs, laughing. “Ok, _Ashley_ , just because you’ve ascended the plane of high school boys and are hoping some college guy will magically come and sweep you off your feet with his mature ass doesn’t mean we all have.”

“Whatever you say, _Josiebean_ ,” Ashley uses the nickname she knows Josie _despises_ , her eyes rolling in their sockets before settling on something else in the distance entirely (what—or _who_ —it is, El can’t really tell), signifying the end of her contribution to this convo. 

“Do you have a dress?” Krista turns her attention back to El, propping up her chin on her fist in eager anticipation of an answer.

“Uh, probably, like, a sundress, or something?”

Puberty was weird to El, she’s been the same height since she was probably 13, but only really _developed_ in any way more recently (don’t get her wrong, though, she’s still on the tinier side), so this past year really put a dent in Hop’s bank account thanks to her need to adjust her clothing sizes.

Meg-Anne reacts as though she’s been shot.

“Nope. Won’t work,” she shakes her head fervently. “As your friends, we can’t let you do that.”

El wants to be sufficiently exasperated, but she pauses to feel warm over Meg-Anne’s use of ‘friends,’ which takes precedence over being overwhelmed. 

“This definitely calls for a shopping trip,” Josie insists, which the other girls confirm with nods. “When are you free? Tomorrow?”

El shakes her head. “Debate team.”

“Friday?”

“Yearbook,” El and Tish say at the same time.

“Saturday?" 

El purses her lips. “Dance club boot camp.”

“ _Christ_ ,” Josie purses her lips. “Well, Sunday is out. Monday?”

“Student council interest meeting,” she winces.

“Dear god!” Meg-Anne sighs. “Can you stop being a perfect model student for, like, five seconds?”

“Monday could work,” Krista interjects. “I have powder-puff tryouts anyway, so I’ll be around. We could just go after.

“Works for me,” El shrugs.

“Wait, you’re doing the powder-puff game?” Josie raises an eyebrow.

“ _Dude_ ,” Krista rolls her eyes. “I was helping out on my dad’s farm all summer, and uh, not to brag, but I’m pretty jacked now.”

“Oh my god, right, I forgot all about your hot dad,” Tish’s eyes light up. “Save a horse, ride a cowb-”

“ _Tish_!” Krista shrieks, crumpling up the dance flyer and throwing it at her. 

El leaves lunch that day with a lot to think about. Ok, so, _boys_ will be at this dance, which definitely changes things. She’s never really had an actual boyfriend that counted and isn’t delusional enough to think it’s as easy as just showing up to a dance, or anything, but _still_. She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t a little bit excited. Also any excuse to buy a dress is good enough for her.

Soon enough, it’s Monday, the student council interest meeting passes uneventfully (more like _boring as fuck-_ ly, if you ask El—but she’d still like a shot at becoming class rep) and she’s waiting for Krista near her locker. She shows up about 10 minutes later, slightly sweaty and frazzled, dangling her keys in front of El.

“Ready, class prez?”

El rolls her eyes, laughing. “I’m just trying to be representative.”

“Shoot for the stars, Ellie,” Krista laughs as they approach her car, El circling around to the passenger seat.

They make small talk all the way to the mall, parking outside Macy’s. The dress section is kind of small since it’s still a bit early for peak homecoming inventory, but there’s still plenty of chiffon and glitter to go around. 

“Where should we start?”

“I don’t know...I kind of want something _different_ I think. Is that dumb?”

“It’s your dress,” Krista sighs, mindlessly running her hand through some of the silky material overflowing from the stuffed dress racks.

“What are you gonna wear?”

“I want something... _red_ ,” Krista’s eyes light up as she gravitates toward a fire engine red gown (it’s genuinely hideous and they both know it, but neither of them says it out loud, Krista instead just dropping the dress unceremoniously).

“Huh,” El considers this. “How bold of you.”

Krista laughs. “I mean, junior year and all, you know.”

El does not know, but lets her keep talking.

“Plus there’s this guy at St. Joe’s I’ve _kind of_  been in love with forever, but, like, we’re at an all girls school, so whenever any guys are within a 500 foot radius they’re swarming like sharks." 

“Aw, who knew Krista was so timid,” El teases, pinching Krista’s cheek before she swats her hand away.

“Shut _up_. So, you gonna help me, or not?”

“Sure. This can be a mutually beneficial trip,” El shrugs. “ _But_ on one condition—tell me everything about this man.”

Krista huffs, but doesn’t say no, and then deeper into dress territory they go. 

After what feels like days and far too many—and too many _ugly_ —dresses to count, El’s feet are screaming (her body still hasn’t 100% adapted to the dance club training regimen) and she’s begging for a soft pretzel from the food court. But on their way out, they pass the sale rack, and El stops in her tracks. The dress that catches her eye is a lavender gown, ankle length with lace bell sleeves and a keyhole neckline featuring a bow at the neck, looking more fit for the ‘70s than the early ‘90s, but _whatever_. She’s immediately obsessed despite not having tried it on and she sheepishly turns to Krista as if seeking her approval, or something.

“Try it on, weirdo,” she laughs.

“You don’t mind? We’ve been at this for literal _hours_.”

“Yeah, and we’re not even done yet. You’re looking at that dress like you want to have its babies. For everyone in this store’s sake, please try it on,” Krista laughs.

So she does, and uh, _wow_ , she’s in love. The material is _soft_ and it fits her like a glove and, sure, it’s a little long, but she knows it’s nothing a pair of short heels can’t fix (which she thankfully has at home and hasn’t grown out of, because fortunately puberty left her shoe size unchanged).

“Yup, this is it,” Krista confirms, breaking El from her reverie.

“Yeah,” El breathes, running her hands down the fabric in wonder. “It is." 

She changes back into her uniform and nearly sprints to the register, Krista hot on her heels. And it’s even better, because not only is the dress a _dream_ , it’s on _sale_ , so she’ll have money to spare from the cash Hop gave her (which is always nice, because while she _loves_ being involved at school, she also can’t help but imagine what things would be like if she did get a job instead).

Once the dress is paid for and she’s holding the garment bag tightly in her arms as though she’s just been reunited with it after being apart for 353 days, she turns to Krista authoritatively.

“Okay, so, next order of business—pretzels, then we’re finding you a damn dress.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Krista laughs.

Thankfully, they find one quickly after eating. It’s in JC Penney’s rather than Macy’s, and even though it’s all the way on the other side of the mall from where they parked, El doesn’t even complain because she’s still _so happy_ , for a multitude of reasons. First of all being, obviously, that she found the most perfect dress in the galaxy. Second, Krista also found hers, so she’s happy, and El loves knowing that she’s helped someone else be happy. And last, but certainly not least, she’s actually _hanging out outside of school_ with a _friend_. Like, this is totally something real friends do, and she feels so happy and warm because it didn’t even take her that long to find them.

After that, the two weeks between finding her dream dress and the dance itself pass both painfully slow and _far_ too quickly. They get ready at Josie’s house because she insists that she has the best makeup and accessory selection due to her supposed “mall connections” (aka her piercing stand discount and shoplifting, basically), and Hopper makes the girls promise to take infinite pictures of El in his very mortifyingly Hop way since he won’t be back to see her off (Josie lives 45 minutes away and there’s been some kid spray painting penises all over Hawkins overnight lately, so he really can’t afford to be out of town after dusk these days).

They’re finally ready after a reasonable amount of time (though they’ll definitely be a little late, but that’s fine, anyway)—and an _un_ reasonable number of photographs primarily due to Hop’s request, much to El’s embarrassment—and El is practically buzzing. She feels a bit silly, because obviously they’re _all_ excited, but the other girls have done this twice before, and El didn’t realize just how weird it would be to go to a co-ed dance when you rarely see boys in your day-to-day anymore (compared to public school, where boys were basically just a constant nuisance you wanted to swat away like a fly). Krista drives them with Josie in the passenger seat and the rest smushed in the back, El half-sitting on Meg-Anne’s lap. Part of her worries that her dress will get wrinkled, but for the most part she just doesn’t care, too giddy to be anxious about anything for too long.

But then they’re at the dance and, oh yeah, it actually _is_ possible to be anxious about things tonight because, lo and behold, there really are boys in attendance. Living, breathing, human boys. El’s not boy crazy, or anything, but she’s also not _blind_ —and it’s not like all those soaps, magazine quizzes, rom-coms, and romance novels haven’t made their own impressions on her expectations of love in high school.

As if she can sense how overwhelmed El is getting, Tish tosses an arm around El’s shoulders, gesturing for the other girls to follow.

“Let’s get some refreshments, shall we?”

After a while, El’s stomach settles a bit. Yes, there are some _interesting_ looks pointed in her direction from some St. Joe’s boys, but for the most part, they’re primarily focused on the freshman girls ( _blegh_ ). She sighs behind her cup of punch before she sees Krista across the dance floor with that boy she’d told El about—Jordan, his name is. She smiles. Meg-Anne, Tish, and Josie are all at the table with El, lazily gossiping about their surroundings, but all having a good time despite not having really _done_ anything in the hour they’ve been there. Ashley, however, disappeared about 20 minutes ago. El thought she saw her headed for the door, but she’s really not positive.

Their conversation is trailing off to a natural end when Josie slaps her hands down on the table.

“Alright, that’s enough. Let’s dance!”

“Seriously, Jos?” Meg-Anne groans, but Tish is already standing up and El isn’t looking totally opposed to the idea, so she knows she’s outnumbered.

Josie doesn’t respond, instead grabbing the girl by the arm and yanking her out to the floor, the other girls following. _Vogue_ is playing (though El could’ve sworn Sister Catherine had mentioned that the school had taken a strong _anti-Madonna_ stance in her _Catholicism and the Middle Ages_ class) and they’ve formed a small circle. It’s a bit awkward a first (El knows she’s on the dance team and all, but _still_ ), but eventually they let their guard down a bit and let loose. Three songs later, El notices _him_ —just an unassuming boy across the room, sipping his punch and glancing between his two friends deep in conversation. He’s _cute_ , with a slight tan and sandy blond hair and wearing a kind of awkwardly fitting blazer. She gives it about 30 seconds before looking back over at him, and this time _he’s_ looking at _her_ , too, and she feels an influx of butterflies in her stomach. They glance back and forth over the next minute or so—passing shy, flirty smiles—before Josie grabs her shoulder, capturing her attention.

“You gonna go talk to him or just eye-fuck him all night?”

“ _Josie!_ ” El cries, because, like, it’s _crude_ and she doesn’t even know his name yet!

But she huffs and digs deep for _some_ type of courage, marching towards him, then slowing down her pace when she’s within 10 feet, wondering just what the fuck she’s doing. But before she can change her mind, the boy has actually closed the distance between him and now he’s just _there_ , a solid handful of inches taller.

“Hey,” he nods, likely feeling as awkward as she does.

“Hi!” She internally curses for sounding almost _too_ perky.

“I hope this doesn’t sound weird, or whatever, but you’re good at dancing,” he nods again, face going red as he takes a sip of his drink, likely just to have something to do.

“Oh, god,” El laughs. “I don’t know what I was even doing out there.”

“Well you were having fun, at least,” he shrugs, a dazzling smile on his face. “Probably more than I can say for most of the people here.”

El shrugs a single shoulder, the right side of her mouth quirking up. “It’s my first one of these, so I don’t exactly know the _lore_.”

“Oh, I know,” he laughs.

“You, uh...you do?” She furrows her brows.

“I definitely would’ve noticed you one of the two other times my mom forced me to come to this,” he says, and El almost hates how she just _melts_.

“Quite the charmer,” she teases.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t have felt the same if you saw the bowtie I wore the last two years.”

She laughs out loud, feeling fun and _light_ and excited. He’s not, like, aggressively handsome or anything, and he looks nothing like her movies tell her he probably “should,” but so far he’s funny and cute and hasn’t been outwardly pervy, so she at least feels comfortable enough to continue the conversation.

“I’m El, by the way,” she introduces, offering her hand. 

“Phillip- uh, _Phil. Please_ don’t call me Phillip,” he shakes his head at himself, but places his hand in hers and shakes, letting it linger a bit longer than necessary.

They chat for a bit more and he has El laughing the whole time and it just feels so _nice_. She goes back to her friends for a while and they tease her endlessly about Phil before practically physically pushing her towards him when a slow song comes on. _She_ asks _him_ to dance, and though she knows it’s just a small, silly thing, it makes her feel powerful and confident to be the one taking charge, to see just how flustered he gets when he ultimately says yes, he thought she’d never ask (because he was too chickenshit to, he admits).

They’re swaying on the dance floor, nothing too crazy, and El is on cloud nine despite knowing that they’re just in her private school gym and his hands are a bit clammy on the waist of her dress and _yes_ , her friends will inevitably snitch to her dad and he’ll be on her case about it until she literally _dies_ , but, still, she’s happy. So happy. _Nothing Compares 2 U_  is coming to a close when Phil speaks for the first time since they started dancing, almost sounding panicked. 

“El!” His tone is hushed, because, y’know, _slow dancing_ (it just seems like the right thing to do?).

“Phil!” El mirrors, confusion clear on her face.

“Before I, um, chicken out,” he rolls his eyes. “Would you wanna hang out sometime?”

Her expression transforms into something softer before she beams. “Yeah, totally.”

He almost looks surprised at his answer. “O-oh! Cool. Um, how should I-”

“Come by the school Thursday afternoon,” El cuts him off, pushing through her own nerves. “I have debate ‘til 4. Then we can do something?”

“Sounds good!” He nods a few times (more than a few times, if we’re being honest). 

“Cool,” El nods definitively, biting her lip to fight the aggressive smile that’s threatening to crack her face in half.

When she gets home that night, she 100% squeals into her pillow (at least _that_ is actually like the movies).

Come Monday, school is business as usual, but El still feels like she’s floating in space a bit. It’s about 40% due to the fact that, oh, she has a _date_ on Thursday (at least, that’s what she thinks it is) and 60% because _she_ was the one to take charge and make the plan. She never in a million years thought she would do that and she wants to pinch herself. Also not being able to gush about it has been _torture_ , so she’s thrilled to be back around her peers rather than her dad, who she’d rather die than tell that she asked a boy out.

She’s practically bursting by lunch, the first to get to their table, drumming her fingers against it and _praying_ that a friend will get there soon.

The four of her friends finally show up already in conversation, vaguely appraising El’s jittery energy and continuing their chat with growing smirks on their faces.

“Alright!” Ashley laughs. “Stop torturing the girl.”

Krista turns, wearing a grin that can only be described as ‘shit-eating.’

“Something you wanna talk about, El?” She inquires innocently.

“ _WhatthehelldoIwearonThursday?_ ” She all but explodes.

“Oh, you mean for your _date_?” Meg-Anne teases, not even feigning innocence at this point.

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, for my _date_.”

“Please,” Tish waves her hand dismissively. “Don’t pretend you’re not, like, creaming your pants over it.”

“That’s not-” El grimaces, but doesn’t get to finish before Josie jumps in.

“Do you have any crop tops?! _Ooh_ or maybe something neon,” she suggests, immediately getting lost in her own thoughts.

“Just do jeans, El,” Krista shrugs.

She looks taken aback. “Just _jeans_? Is that enough?”

“Enough for _what_?” Tish smirks. “Are you trying to, like, bang?”

“You are being so unhelpful,” El groans, leaning her forehead against the lunch table.

Ashley huffs before El hears something placed near the side of her head with a dull _slap_.

“Just because I can’t stand to hear a minute more of this... _here_.”

El looks up and, _oh_ , Ashley’s passed over her coveted issue of _Cosmo_. To be fair, El gets magazines of her own and she spent upwards of three hours last night poring through them for any type of help, but Ashley is always face down in hers like the fountain of youth is inside, so maybe there’s something in El’s that she’s just not seeing.

“Seriously?” She asks with wide eyes.

“Just don’t dog-ear the pages,” she shrugs, _almost_ smiling.

“ _Holy shit_ ,” El mutters under her breath before raising her voice back to normal volume. “Thank you.”

Krista clasps her hands together, commanding all their attention. “So now that that’s resolved _and_ you’ve resurfaced from that thing, dear Ashley, where the hell did you end up on Friday?”

“Oh yeah!” Josie recalls, pointing a carrot stick at the friend in question. “You went AWOL.”

“So dramatic,” Ashley rolls her eyes, smirking. “I was just getting some air.”

“For _two hours_?” El raises a brow. 

“Come to think of it,” Tish narrows her eyes as if she’s zeroing in on a case-cracking realization. “You _did_ smell like smoke in the car on the way home.. 

“ _Ashley Louise!_ ” Meg-Anne scolds, sounding absolutely scandalized.

“My middle name isn’t Louise!” Ashley protests, exasperated.

“So you’re not denying the _other_ part.”

“You guys are honestly ridiculous,” she laughs and punctuates her statement with a bite of salad, her free hand making and releasing a loose fist as if she’s itching for a magazine to skim through.

(They don’t find out until a month later that _she_ wasn’t smoking, but that Alexa Myers—her undisclosed date for the night—was, the two of them alternating between airily chatting and kissing behind the gym away from the prying, judgmental eyes of their classmates and administration. Naturally, none of her _actual_ friends bat an eye, instead chattering breathlessly and demanding she tell them _everything_ —well, whatever she’s comfortable with, at least.) 

Once school and student council are over (rep elections are in two weeks and while she _should_ be campaigning, she really needs to get past this damn date first), she spends her evening with her face in Ashley’s _Cosmopolitan_ , content to eat dinner with one hand and flip pages with the other until Hop chastises her and she realizes that Ashley will absolutely _end_ her if she brings it back to school with meatloaf stains. And, well, she’s got a date on Thursday she needs to stay alive for.

It’s after her third outfit attempt that Hopper knocks on the door, likely just to say goodnight, but he stops when he sees what the hell she’s wearing.

“Uh, this a new dance club costume, or something?”

Okay, yes, admittedly this is one of the more _bizarre_ looks—a fuzzy yellow turtleneck sweater layered over a babydoll dress and thick, ribbed red tights accentuated with neon pink legwarmers and white Converse high tops.

She pinches the bridge of her nose, wanting to choose her words carefully before responding. _Now or never, El._

“Please don’t freak out!” She starts.

 _Smooth_.

“...Continue,” Hop stands in her doorway, hands on hips.

“So I _might_ have a little _thing_ on Thursday?” She scrunches her face.

“ _Thing_? What kind of thing? You mean besides debate? You have tons of _things_.”

El can’t help but roll her eyes. “A different thing. Uh, a.. _date_ thing. I think.”

She’s already grimacing even though her dad hasn’t said a word yet.

“Oh. _Oh_. A date, huh?” Hop also pinches the bridge of his nose, mimicking El’s earlier move. “What’s his name?”

“Phil- _dad_!” El shrieks. “You can’t just run a background check on everyone I talk to.”

“Worked with Marsha Stevens,” he shrugs, entirely unashamed.

“We were _six_. Just because she was late to a playdate didn’t mean she had a criminal record,” she rolls her eyes, trying hard to resist the urge to laugh.

“Just lookin’ out for you, Ellie.”

“Well, anyway, so yeah,” she says lamely, tucking her hair behind her ear. “That’s where I’ll be on Thursday after debate. We’ll probably just go to the mall, or something.”

“Or _something_?” Hopper’s brows are now in his hairline.

“Just the _mall_ , period,” she clarifies, rolling her eyes again.

“Be home by 10, _period_ ,” he mocks her exasperated tone.

“Roger that,” she laughs. “Is that all you came here for? To harass me about my date?”

“More like harassing you about that _outfit_ ,” he snorts before continuing. “But no. I really just came to say goodnight, but since _you_ had some news, I might as well share mine.”

“I can get my belly button pierced?!” She perks up, eyes glittering with hope.

Hop laughs. “In your dreams, kiddo. No. I actually, uh, I have a date myself this weekend.”

“ _WHAT_?!” El shrieks and all but breaks the sound barrier.

“Yeah,” her dad rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “An old friend from town, actually. Knew her in high school.”

El knows better than to ask what _‘knew her’_ means (gag), so she just lets him continue.

“We’re just grabbing dinner on Saturday. But, uh, yeah, that’s where I’ll be.”

“Cute,” she smirks.

He shakes his head in exasperation. “But hey, let me know how your date goes—if it sucks you could always try to date one of her son’s _‘adorably geeky’_ friends, her words, not mine.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she laughs before bidding him a goodnight and resuming her outfit experiments for another hour. 

She practically blinks and then it’s Thursday. She can barely concentrate in class, let alone debate team, but then all is forgotten and she’s in the locker room to change and _oh fuck_ , she forgot to pack her jeans. She’s silently praying to whatever’s out there to just, _kill her_ , honestly, because this is so embarrassing, when she catches sight of the clock on the wall. Phil will be outside in essentially any minute now, so she just has to make do, leaving her in her plaid uniform skirt, pair of white high tops, and a pale green fitted turtleneck under a lavender cardigan. To be honest, it clashes _horrendously_ , but she tells herself it’s just the warped locker room mirror and awful fluorescent lighting in an attempt to not break down and cry. Her makeup and hair (minimal and a high ponytail with some face-framing strands loose) are right, at least.

She nearly gets into three different cars ( _embarrassing_ ) before she sees Phil pulling up and she’s so giddy with anticipation she can hardly stand it. He gets out and circles the car, opening her door (she fucking swoons, naturally) so she can slide in, greeting her with a warm hello. He even lets her control the radio for the duration of their ride, which is honestly a _big deal_ to her, so she appreciates it. The ride is filled with awkward, nervous first date chatter, touching on everything and nothing (but also making sure not to get _too_ serious, it is a first date, after all) and, soon enough, they’re at the mall. 

To be quite honest, she really doesn’t know what people _do_ at mall dates, but it seemed like a safe, neutral zone (and if that’s mainly just because she knows Josie is working and can give her an out if she needs to—she played around with multiple hypothetical scenarios, ranging from playing dead to telling El her cat has whooping cough, at lunch today—well, Phil doesn’t need to know). Naturally, she gravitates towards the bookstore and is _thrilled_ when Phil is equally enthused.

“So, what now?” El asks, smiling up at him as they stand in the entrance to Borders.

“So, I have an idea,” Phil rubs the back of his neck nervously. “When I was a kid I used to come here and just... _hide_ in the aisles, leaning against the bookshelves and reading for _hours_ ‘til my parents found me. They were pissed, of course. But they caught on soon enough, and, well, it was always really nice. We could do that, maybe?”

El doesn’t answer right away because she’s taken aback by the absolute _sweetness_ of the whole idea, so, of course, Phil takes her silence the completely wrong way.

“I mean- it’s stupid! Sorry, we can do something else if you want, I-”

“Phil,” El stops his rambling with a hand on his arm. “That sounds perfect.”

That’s how they spend the next hour or so, laughing at particularly ridiculous books and even each selecting one for the other to read, learning a bit more about each other in the process. El never realized how _intimate_ it was to read a book knowing that it was someone else’s favorite. She’s skimming the copy of _The Outsiders_ that he gave her when she realizes just how close they are, leaning up against opposite sides of the shelves, but their legs lining up side by side. It’s a bit cramped, but if either minds, they don’t say anything. She watches him for a while before clearing her throat.

It takes a few more seconds for Phil to actually tear himself away from _Wuthering Heights_ , but when he does, he looks at El like she’s the eighth wonder of the world or some other miraculous, but unattainable thing, and she’s leaning in like she physically couldn’t stop herself if she wanted to.

“Uh, El?” Phil gulps, fidgeting.

“Hm?” She looks at him through her lashes.

“Can I kiss you?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” she giggles, recalling his words from the dance.

And then he’s kissing her and it’s simple and sweet, a perfect first date kiss, and she’s _so happy_.

They only stay there for a few more minutes—her legs won’t stop falling asleep and she really can’t risk rolling her ankle when there’s a dance club competition coming up—before going back into the din of the mall and sharing an order of nachos.

He kisses her again when he drops her off at home, his lips salty and a little dry, and El feels like she basically floats to the front door (which Hop mercilessly teases her about for, like, 20 minutes).

In school the next morning, the girls can’t even wait until lunch, instead surrounding her at her locker (and thoroughly confusing poor Mary Hopkins, who skitters away with probably only half the books she needs) and peppering her with questions before she’s even fully rubbed the sleep out of her eyes.

“Did you kiss?!” Tish asks, and naturally it’s the one question that stands out from the rest and El immediately bites down on her lip, hard ( _ouch_ ), which does little to fight the bashful smile on her lips, but at least prevents her from releasing the girliest squeal known to man.

“Ah!” Meg-Anne shrieks. “She totally, 100% did!”

“So, how was it?!” Krista lightly bumps her fist against El’s shoulder.

El sighs, the rest of the girls going silent in anticipation, before speaking again. “It was perfect.”

They’re all high pitched squeaks and cooing after that, Ashley even remarking that it’s “ _easily the cutest hetero shit she’s ever heard_.”

 

**GO TO THE NEXT CHAPTER**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I know they’re not the Party, but I’m honestly obsessed with these girls and had so much fun writing them, so I will protect them at all costs


	22. Every Breath You Take

She and Phil start dating after that, El’s first _real_ boyfriend if you don’t count Kyle in second grade (they dated for a whole 37 minutes until she accidentally let his hamster loose on pet day and it bit the principal) and she just feels so _lucky_. She has friends— _amazing_ friends—and a living, breathing boyfriend.

Her extracurriculars are going well, too—she won class rep alongside Simone Collins—and her dad is actually _dating_ . He would never admit it, but he comes home with his head in the clouds over Joyce _way_ more than she ever does about Phil, and as exasperated as she is, she’s so happy because _he’s_ so happy.

Everything seems to be going well until May when things kind of just... _implode_ . The first _mishap_ occurs in yearbook when everyone is, innocently enough, discussing class superlatives. Stacey Blake enters their conversation with just an _evil_ look on her face that El can already tell is a bad sign. Stacey, is, unfortunately, one of the few _real_ stereotypes that she’s encountered at Winston and she’s _exhausting_ —popular, wealthy, thinks the world revolves around her, the whole nine. And she’s typically pretty easy to avoid (El and the girls fall decently low on the school hierarchy, but not the _lowest_ by a long shot, so basically no one cares to bother them at all), but she does have to endure her in yearbook, which honestly _sucks_.

“What about a cutest couple superlative?” Stacey’s expression is _cloyingly_ sweet and El has to bite down on her lip to avoid gagging.

Lara—a senior, the yearbook president, and one of the few people not afraid to talk back to her (bless her)—just purses her lips and narrows her eyes. “Catholic all girls school? Did ya forget about that? We would get suspended faster than we could say ‘amen.’”

But El has a deep-seated feeling that Stacey’s point has little to do with her personal advocacy for non-discriminatory yearbook inclusion...

“I feel like we should make an exception,” Stacey’s shit-eating grin is unwavering. “Alexa Myers and Ashley Larota are pretty cute, no?”

El’s pretty sure there are some gasps around the room at the revelation, probably mostly from naive, wide-eyed freshmen, but she can’t exactly hear that over the blood rush absolutely _roaring_ in her ears. She knows for a fact Ashley has been trying to keep that facet of her life on the low and she doesn’t even know how the fuck Stacey—of all people—found out in the first place.

So that’s how she ends up with a week of detention for fighting in yearbook.

Her dad tells her how lucky she is that it wasn’t _worse_ , but after they’re off campus and out of earshot of any potential school-affiliated parties, he admits how proud he is that she stuck up for her friend. He even treats her to a mint milkshake at Benny’s (her favorite) once they’re back in Hawkins and she alternates between sipping it and resting the cool glass against her sore knuckles—though most of the fight was admittedly just hair-pulling.

She and Phil have been in a weird place, too, which is just exacerbated by her _altercation_. He’s upset that she “could’ve jeopardized her future over some asshole” (whatever, Phil). But there’s also college apps coming up which they avoid talking about because it always results in one—or both—of them getting snippy (she’s considering Boston, he’s definitely not). And then there’s the _minor_ detail that they’ve been dating for about six months and, oh yeah, she doesn’t feel any closer to saying “I love you” to him than the day she met him (even less than that day, possibly, because she was _seriously_ infatuated at that dance). She knows she shouldn’t compare, but Krista and Jordan have only been dating for four months and they’re, like, _definitely_ going to get married. They even wanted to go to the same college before they even met!

But yeah, El can’t necessarily say the same and her hopeless romantic heart knows that it means something is wrong. But Phil’s also already her prom date (she asked via mixed CD slipped between the pages of his very well-loved copy of _The Outsiders_ that she pretended to borrow to read for the third time), which was sweet at the time, but now kind of just puts a sour taste in her mouth. Not like she’s a stranger to breaking stereotypes, or anything ( _who said dance club members can’t throw punches_ ), but there are some things a girl just _doesn’t do_ , and going stag to prom—especially when a date has already been secured—is one of her rules.

They break up on a sunny Saturday in early June over milkshakes (he orders strawberry for her and she has to struggle not to correct him on it) and she’s surprised at how weirdly emotional they both are over it—it’s not like he didn’t realize things were falling apart, either. It’s bittersweet and ironic, mainly because in the same breath that she confirms things are over she also passes some of the spare prom dress material that the tailor had given her to him and reminds him this is the color he should be matching (his mom _begged_ him to find out; El’s not, like, a sadist or something).

Prom is fine, she and Phil go and match (Hop graciously doesn’t force them to take any couple photos, but Phil’s mom _insists_ ) and never slow dance, but her friends are there so it’s a little bit better. While it’s not the way she imagined her first prom going, nothing this year is really how she imagined it going—both for better and for worse—so she still feels warm when Meg-Anne passes her their shared bottle of champagne once prom is long over and the girls are all circled on Ashley’s bedroom floor (still in their dresses, of course).

Summer is a glorious and sloth-like change of pace, even if it means El doesn’t see her friends much. She gets a job at the Hawkins pool and Hop tries to convince her to hang with Will and his gang, but she decides to pass, citing her desire to just _not deal with boys for a while_.

Senior year is a blur not unlike the latter half of junior year, except El is used to Winston now and—most importantly—she doesn’t have to take the _bus_ . By some stroke of luck, she wins student council Vice President and her running mate, Monika, _just so happens_ to also live in Hawkins. She’s not trying to be dramatic, or anything, but she’s pretty sure _this_ is the best thing that getting involved at Winston ever afforded her.

She applies to Boston University, Northeastern, and UMass, getting into all three in a way that makes her dad cry and her friends throw an impromptu “wine night” (aka shared wine coolers) in Tish’s basement on a school night.

They go to prom as a _girls only_ group—Ashley finding a loophole and getting to _actually_ take Alexa as her date—and El realizes her junior year rule was really, really stupid.

Graduation comes and goes with little fanfare besides her dad crying _again_ , but it’s not until mid-August when the girls are having their send-off sleepover for Josie that El herself actually cries (and not just because they’ve been drinking).

Their laughter has just died down after Krista told a joke and El speaks after a few seconds of playing with the tab of her Natural Light from her seat on the edge of Meg-Anne’s in-ground pool.

“I’m really glad I met you guys,” she sounds sheepish, though she’s never had a reason to withhold her emotions with these girls before.

“Aw, Elliebear,” Ashley grins from above her beer. “We’re glad we met you, too.”

“Seriously!” Josie emerges from the lap she’s been lazily swimming. “You’re easily the most involved of all of us, so you totally boosted our school cred.”

“Shut up,” El rolls her eyes, laughing bashfully.

“We mean it!” Tish insists from her spot right next to her, leaning her head on El’s shoulder.

“Thanks for ruining all my misconceptions about _‘private school bitches,' "_  El releases a watery laugh, using finger quotes.

Krista swims over, nudging her on the knee. “Yeah, well, thanks for busting our misconceptions of ‘ _public school degenerates_.’”

Then they’re all laughing, then crying, and it goes on for probably 10 minutes until Ashley announces that it’s getting _too_ emotional and runs up behind El, grabbing her in a bear hug and tackling her into the pool. The rest of the girls follow and that’s how they spend their night, lazily treading water and sharing stories until they’re shivering and pruny and too tired to keep their eyes open and have to go inside before they _drown_.

Josie’s the first to leave, but El’s gone not long after, the third of their group to go. She moves into Boston University and meets her roommate, a girl named Max whose red hair reminds her a bit of Meg-Anne (and, huh, they both even have M names)—so she naturally tells the story, both of them laughing at her recollection of the girl’s utter exasperation at the spelling of her own name. Hop takes them both out for lunch because Max moved in all by herself and he can’t help but feel protective of her, this girl with a clearly fierce personality most likely built up from having been through _some shit_ (and, hell, does he know all about that).

Max is brash, but honest, and admits she’s a bit messy, but clean when it counts. Max is also _easily_ way more outgoing than El. Despite El’s borderline aggressive involvement at Winston, that sociability hasn’t totally extended to college and she’s just straight up _overwhelmed._  So, to be honest, she’s more than happy to let Max take the lead on many of their social encounters (at least until El can find her own footing, she hopes).

“ _Ellie_ ,” Max barges in, saying El’s name in a sing-songy tone and interrupting her reading. “Guess what day it is?”

“Thursday?” She shrugs.

“Not just any Thursday, ma’am,” Max laughs. “ _Thirsty_ Thursday!”

El has a feeling Max may have gotten a head start. And, well, she’s been begging El to take part in syllabus week festivities with her since Sunday, so she guesses it’s only fair.

“And what, pray tell, is that supposed to mean?”

“Ooh, ‘ _pray tell_ , _’_ look at that BU vocab already,” Max teases.

Then she simply hops up on the other end of El’s lofted bed, bouncing a bit on the XL twin mattress.

“But anyway,” she continues. “It means there’s a _party tonight_. And we, my lovely roomfriend, are going.”

El sighs. Part of her wants to protest—she’s getting to a _juicy_ part of her book right now—but it’s not like she’s not curious about going. Up until now, her “party” experiences are limited to one wine cooler each or a split bottle of champagne amongst her five friends in whoever’s house was parent-free that night.

“Alrighty,” El slaps her book closed definitively, careful to dog-ear the page ( _sorry Ashley,_ she thinks, smirking). “What do I wear?”

“Seriously?” Max jumps off the bed, her face alight with giddy disbelief.

“One thing you should know about me is that I _love_ social experiments,” El laughs, also getting down from her bed to rummage through her clothes.

Max snorts. “Yeah, _okay_ , or you’re just trying to get laid.”

El’s cheeks involuntarily color at that—she and Phil may had gotten close (ish?), but never _all the way_ , and, well, she did ultimately go to an all girls school and he was her only boyfriend, so yeah.

She rolls her eyes, hoping that she caught herself before Max noticed.

“What’s a girl gotta do to change in peace, Mayfield?” Changing the subject seems like her best bet.

“Look hot,” Max winks before exiting.

An hour later and they’re off, Max already three beers deep and El more like one and a half. The party is close enough that they can walk, thankfully, and El is actually grateful for the reprieve from late summer humidity that comes with nightfall—she’s wearing the same fitted green turtleneck she wore on her first date with Phil, ironically, and a pair of jeans she bought during her pre-college shopping excursion along with her trusty white high tops. She passes on makeup because she knows it’ll just melt off and her shoulder-length hair is left in its natural waves. She feels good. Like _herself_ , which is important, she thinks.

The party is nothing too wild, the music is actually a bit drowned out by the sheer number of _conversations_ happening—not to mention how alcohol just makes everyone _loud_ —which she figures will probably change when talking gives way to, uh, _not talking_ (for other people, though, not her, naturally).

“This is bitchin’,” Max exclaims, loosely grabbing El by the wrist and pulling her towards where she assumes the alcohol is.

She’s right. El eyes the punch, but instead opts for making herself a drink while Max digs through the fridge and pulls out a tall boy, ignoring the other, smaller beers scattered on the counter _and_ the protests from some guy El assumes lives in this apartment and is the owner of said beer (“Jared, right?” Max coos before kissing him on the cheek and all is seemingly forgiven).

Overall, she has fun, getting slightly tipsy in the process. Max is typically the one to start conversation with strangers, but once she’s circled back in with that Jared guy, El is on her own. She sips her drink nervously before she spots _him_. It’s hard not to, honestly—he’s a mop of dark hair basically half a head taller than every single person in the room. She feels pulled to him like a magnet, letting her feet take the lead as she weaves through her peers.

“Hello,” she greets casually, looking up at him.

 _Pretty_.

“Uh, hi,” he laughs. “How are you?”

“I’m great!” El exclaims, feeling more _bubbly_ than actually drunk. “You?”

“I guess I’m great, too,” he laughs again, taking a sip.

“Do you have a name?” She raises her eyebrow.

“Mike Wheeler,” he nods.

“El Hopper,” she offers him her hand, all business.

“Nice to meet you, El,” he raises his drink to hers, tapping the plastic and aluminum together.

They spend the next however many minutes talking—could be five minutes, could be five millennia as far as El’s concerned—and El is honestly starry-eyed. Not only is Mike devastatingly attractive (to her, anyway), he’s funny and smart and she can’t stop thinking about what Max said earlier about _getting laid._

Dammit, Mayfield.

Out of nowhere, she plops her half-finished drink down on the nearest end table and Mike just eyes her quizzically.

“Um,” he laughs nervously. “Not to go total mom on you, but you probably shouldn’t put your drink down at a random college party.”

El snorts before poking his shoulder. “Thanks, _mom_. But it’s all good, I’m done.”

“You’re done?” Mike furrows his brows, taking a sip of his own drink as if to reinforce his question.

“Yep,” she nods.

“Cool,” Mike shrugs. “Any, uh, reason why?”

“Because I like you, Mike Wheeler, and if I keep drinking I’ll inevitably do something stupid,” she crosses her arms, partially feeling nonchalant and partially wanting to staple her own mouth shut (so _liquid courage_ isn’t just an urban myth—cool).

Mike looks taken aback, eyes wide and cheeks flushed. “Oh! Um, _cool_.”

He awkwardly drinks his beer in a way that makes it obvious that it’s empty and he’s just trying to find something to do, but eventually they’ve resumed their earlier chatter.

But then there’s a pound on the door from the neighbors and they all have to leave and Max is apparently staying with Jared (but slips El a $20 for a cab so she’s not really mad about it once she’s assured that Max is _fine_ and _safe_ and making a _perfectly conscious decision_ ) and by the time she turns back around, Mike is gone. Shit.

She’s not drunk enough to be _drunk_ , but just drunk enough to be hungry, so she opts to head to the pizzeria next door instead of taking Max up on the cab offer just yet. She figures it must be pretty late, but the pizza place still has a healthy crowd (with a varying range of sobriety) so El orders three slices (syllabus week, no rules) and sits comfortably at a small booth made only for two, propping her feet up on the seat across from her. By some stroke of miracle, none of the more intoxicated patrons bother her, which she’s beyond grateful for.

Probably an hour and a half passes between finishing her first slice and her third, and she’s feeling brand new and decides to stay for an extra half hour just people-watching (college is fascinating, really).

She hails a cab with ease, offering a healthy tip (thanks again, Max) before swiping into her dorm building, saying hello to the girl at the front desk, and taking the elevator to the third floor. She’s minding her business, only half cognizant of her surroundings when he shows up _again_ like a vision. It’s then that she realizes they actually hadn’t even touched on some of the more mundane topics she’d gotten used to discussing at length during this first week of school (majors, dorms, 8am classes, _blah_ ) during their conversation at the party. But she does know how afraid he is of rattlesnakes and quicksand. _Huh_.

“Hey! You!” She calls out to him before realizing he’s wearing nothing but a towel—one hand holding it in place at his waist and the other carrying his shower caddy—and her mouth goes dry.

“Oh! El, hey,” he responds casually as though he’s literally not _in a towel_ right now.

“Do you wanna hang out?” El blurts, and would want to die if she wasn’t _aggressively_ curious as to what his answer will be.

“Right now?” He asks.

“Sure,” she shrugs ( _who_ is she?). “I don’t have Friday classes, do you?”

“Not til 3.”

“So then it’s practically early!”

He laughs and El feels _warm_ from the inside out. “Guess I can’t argue with that logic.”

He motions toward his door with his head and she follows dumbly, taking in her surroundings. It’s as under-decorated as one would expect a shared male dorm to be, especially so early in the semester. She still doesn’t know what she’s doing there, but she already knows that Mike is unlike anyone she’s ever met (and anyone she probably _will_ ever meet).

“Where’s your roommate?”

“Who knows,” Mike shrugs. “He’s a quiet guy.”

El has nothing to say to that, so she opts instead to continue looking around their space.

“Um, well,” Mike is rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly once he’s put his shower caddy down. “I need to change now.”

“Oh! Sorry,” El laughs nervously, not sure what to do before simply turning toward the door in hopes that it won’t take too long.

But also her blood is feeling too hot for her veins (it bypassed just _warm_ a while ago) and she’s just _itchy_ all over, so not even half a second before she’s turned around she’s speaking up again. “Mike?”

“What’s up?” He asks, not really noticing that El is taking small, shuffling steps towards him until she all but _lunges_ at him.

Their teeth clash at first, him not really expecting it, so she pulls back a bit to give him a chance to say _what the fuck_ , _please don’t ever do that again_ , _dear god get out of my dorm room_ , but he doesn’t, his hand threading in her hair in a way that pulls it a bit at the scalp and makes her shiver before he swallows her gasp with his own mouth.

“I-is this okay?” Mike forces the words out, sounding both nervous and downright _pained_.

“Ya-huh,” El breathes out, borderline incomprehensible, before her mouth is back on his.

Soon their bodies are so close that he doesn’t need to hold onto the towel, her hips doing the job well enough from their place pinned against his. But it doesn’t matter in a few minutes, anyway, because the urgency is clearly building between them and El wraps a leg around his hip, waiting for him to take the hint and reach below her other thigh, resulting in her being fully wrapped around his body like a koala and suddenly it’s _towel? What towel?_

He walks them back to his bed and, from there, the only sounds are their breathy moans and gasps and the occasional _“this okay?”_ —oh, and there’s the moment where they can’t stop laughing because El’s head gets caught in her turtleneck and it _totally_ threatens to kill the mood—all punctuated by wet, sloppy kisses (both on lips and definitely _not_ on lips) that would make El feel _mortified_ in the light of day. But there’s no time for _embarrassment_ (not lasting embarrassment, anyway) when they’re this close and she doesn’t regret it one bit, even if Mike’s adorably awkward and she’s just _awkwardly_ awkward.

She wakes up first in the morning, taking a bit to realize just where she is and heaving a sigh of relief at seeing his roommate’s bed still empty and made the same way it was when they went to bed. Oh, right, _when they went to bed_ . El feels her cheeks immediately heat up and she can’t help but shift her attention to the person she’s still tangled with, using the opportunity to take him in. She runs a finger down his bare back and notices how _soft_ his skin is.

She doesn’t really know him, she knows, and it’s not like they’re _in love_ or anything, but she’s not about to say it was a bad idea (ha, as if). It was a little clumsy, she knows, grimacing when she recalls a particular noise she made at one point and the distinct _crack_ of Mike’s head against the wooden bed frame at another, and while there weren’t any rose petals or candles (they can’t even _have_ candles in the dorms, anyway) like all her movies and books and shows tried to convince her there would be, it’s still probably the best first time she could’ve ever imagined. And plus, if she learned anything from Winston (and she sure learned a _lot_ —nothing about sex, though, that place was a bastion of abstinence-only education), it’s that movies and books and shows are so often wrong about so many things.

Mike starts to stir, then, and El momentarily panics—should she get out of there? She can’t even if she wanted to, thanks to how they’re cuddling ( _cuddling?_ ), but she gives herself credit for at least entertaining the idea. He blinks blearily and then a few seconds later his eyes are wide as saucers and El is practically _watching_ the memories of everything that happened replay through his brain (if his deep blush is any indication, that is) as he lifts his arm from where it instinctively settled on her waist overnight, just letting it linger in the air since he doesn’t quite know where to put it now.

“Um, hi,” he croaks sheepishly.

“Hello,” she laughs.

“So, um, here we are,” he nods down toward their bodies, still naked, but covered by his duvet.

“Yep.”

“Question,” he starts, running a hand through his hair (it just makes it messier). “Last night you said you were gonna stop drinking before you did something stupid. Is, uh, this that particular _‘something stupid?_ ’”

El laughs out loud at this. “No. Nope, you’re good. I was already 99% sober. Three slices of pizza deep, actually.”

“Oh thank god,” Mike breathes a sigh of relief. “I didn’t think it was, uh, stupid, either.”

El glances over him and realizes the clock, sighing as she considers just how to untangle herself, for real this time.

“Not to be, like, a stereotype or something, but I really do need to go,” El winces.

“Oh, yeah, uh, that’s fine!” Mike shrugs, struggling to sit up and attempting to help her find her clothes. “I have class today, anyway.”

“3 o’clock, right?” El laughs, winking.

“Y-yeah,” he laughs and El has the decency to close her eyes when he gets up to grab a pair of sweatpants for himself (not that it really matters at this point, she guesses—but still, that Boston sunlight is pretty unforgiving this time of morning).

She follows soon after, messily redressing herself, not bothering to tie her shoes or put her belt back on. Then they’re standing at his door, awkward as ever.

“So it was nice, uh, meeting you? I guess?” El cringes. “I mean, I definitely _met_ you, but this feels...beyond that.”

Mike laughs in a way that she can only describe as self-deprecating. “Yep, it was nice meeting you, too.”

“Cool!” El bounces on the balls of her feet. “Well I’ll definitely see you around.”

“You too!” Mike says, sounding a little eager in a way that El just finds _adorable_.

They awkwardly hug after that, unsure of what else to do (a kiss would just be...too much) and El is off, walking a handful of doors down until she’s back in her own room.

Much to her exasperation, Max is back in the room (she basically loves Max, she can already tell she’ll be a great roommate and even better friend, but like, she just needs a tiny bit of time to process).

“Just where have you been, young lady?” Max raises an eyebrow over the spoonful of cereal she’s about to swallow at her desk.

“Uh…” El attempts to come up with _something_ , but Max is speaking again before she can say anything comprehensible.

Or _shrieking_ , really.

“Is that a _hickey_?!” Max exclaims, jumping up to examine El more closely.

She silently curses how hastily she got changed, her turtleneck now bunched closer towards the bottom of her neck.

“Dude, check it out!” Max is practically giddy, reaching to move the collar of her oversized t-shirt. “We match!”

And, honestly, all El can do is laugh, falling onto her bed in a fit of hysterics with Max soon following.

Despite living on the same floor of the same building, El doesn’t see Mike for a whole week, and when she does, it’s not even in the dorm. Max is dragging her to the dining hall that Friday for an early dinner so they can “carb load” because they’re “totally getting shitty tonight” (Max’s words, obviously). She and Max are in the sandwich line when she sees him sitting down at a faraway table and she doesn’t realize that she’s stopped in her tracks until Max’s tray is digging into her back.

“What gives-” Max starts. “Uh, _who_ is that?”

“Hm?” El startles. “Oh, nothing, nobody.”

“Oh shit!” Max chortles. “Wait- you’re telling me that _nerd_ gave you _that?!”_

And then, before El can protest (he’s _cute_ , okay?) or do anything else about it, they’re getting their sandwiches and Max is marching them over to the table where Mike is sitting.

“Hello sir,” she greets sweetly enough.

Mike startles, looking up from the book he’s reading (a _science textbook_ , good god, what an adorable geek) then looking past Max and seeing El. His eyebrows have become one with his hairline.

“U-um, hi there,” he shakes his head. “Hi El.”

She can do little more than offer an awkward barely-wave, seeing as Max is entirely taking charge of the situation as she does.

“Mind if we sit here?” Max winks. “I mean, you did give my friend, here, the most violent-looking hickey I’ve ever seen, so I think it’s the least you could do.”

El. Wants. To. _Die_.

And though she has no verbal confirmation, she can only assume from the blush burning on Mike’s face that he’s thinking something similar.

He slaps his textbook closed. “Be my guest.”

“Ooh, he’s a gentleman, Ellie,” Max stage-whispers behind her hand. “...But was he a gentleman last n-”

“Shouldn’t we hurry up?” El interrupts, desperate to derail where _that_ sentence was going. “We still have to get ready for the party, after all.”

But this very well may have been the wrong thing to say, too.

“Party?” Mike perks up, curiosity getting the better of him.

Max smiles then, all devious and Cheshire cat-like. “Yep, off-campus apartment. Supposedly it should be ‘chiller’ than last week’s. You comin’?”

Mike glances between Max and El and the table and El tries to keep her face impassive. Honestly, she’s still wildly attracted to him, but again, she barely knows him, and what happened last night _probably_ shouldn’t happen again (she doesn’t know why, it just seems like what people in college do after sleeping with virtual strangers). He’s a nice enough guy, though (uh, understatement), so she feels like they could be good friends (again, understatement).

“Sure, why not?” He shrugs, going in for another bite of his pizza.

“Lovely,” Max turns to El with an absolutely _evil_ smirk on her face before diving into her own meal.

The night goes similarly to the last, the only difference being the introduction of Mike’s hometown friend, Lucas, who also goes to BU, but lucked out with a better dorm because he’s on the swim team. He and Max spend the whole night playfully arguing, so naturally she’s smitten, and El is kind of glad her friend is distracted because, like clockwork, she goes home with Mike again, everything feeling routine and _right_ despite it still only being the second time it’s happened.

 _“It should never happen again”_ ? Who the hell said _that_?

“So is this, like, a _thing_ now?” She asks once their breathing has evened out and she’s on her back looking up at the ceiling—it’s easier for her to ask about these things so candidly under the blanket of night, she realizes.

“It, uh, it could be.” She feels more than sees him shrug.

And that’s that, she guesses.

They fall asleep after that then wake up and make the trek to the dining hall as if it’s the normal, friendly thing to do after such a thing.

Max finds them there, plopping down into a seat at their table and El is _gawking_ at the sight in front of her. Mike just stuffs a far too large piece of bagel into his mouth, likely to prevent himself from doing the same.

“Max,” El cries, amusement clear as day on her face. “You’ve been _maimed_.”

And, sure enough, Max’s neck is a downright _impressive_ mosaic of deep purples and blues.

She scoffs. “Yeah, uh, I guess I still had that one from that guy—Jordan, maybe? And, well, it turns out your friend Lucas is quite competitive.”

Mike snorts. “Oh, right. He’s always been like that in _all_ areas of his life. I suppose I could’ve warned you.”

“It’s fine,” Max shrugs, smirking. “It was fun finding out.”

“Oh, _gross_ ,” Mike scrunches his face together at the thought of his best friend’s sexcapades while El also grimaces.

“Please!” Max rolls her eyes, taking a bite of her bacon. “It’s not like you two were studying the Bible last night!”

El wants to protest, or something, but instead she just glances over at Mike and starts _giggling_ and then he starts laughing, like, uncontrollably (he even snorts once, which El thinks is so cute it makes her start laughing all over again) and Max is just sitting there looking up at the ceiling as if to ask whatever deity is up there how she got stuck with these nutjobs.

“Y’know,” she begins, aggressively trying to sop the remains of her scrambled eggs up with a slice of toast. “For two people who just boned, you guys are _ridiculously_ lame.”

It’s stupid, and silly, and kind of awkward, and—she can’t stress this enough— absolutely _not_ how she expected her first semester to go, but El feels bubbly all over again thanks to the two people she considers hopefully soon-to-be real friends sitting at the table with her, and she thinks back in wonder when she realizes she really did get pretty lucky in the friendship department. _Hop would be so proud_ , that sap (but she would leave out the whole _sex_ _thing_ , of course).

And thus begins—unceremoniously, if you ask her—Mike and El’s months-long tryst (it’s not really a “tryst” at all, since they both only have, like, two friends who _definitely_ know, but El likes calling it a tryst because it reminds her of the harlequin novels she pretended not to pack for school, but are currently in a box under her bed). And it’s not like they don’t do it like rabbits or something, it’s really only surrounding special occasions. After parties, when they feel like they may _implode_ from finals stress, on their birthdays, when El feels especially homesick, when Mike’s dad calls and is being particularly dickish, so yeah, totally like...a casual, just _whenever_ thing.

She isn’t sure _why_ they carry on this way, exactly. She knows they must like each other—they tell each other as much, um, _nonverbally_ —but it’s just easier like this, she thinks. There’s not much time for _talking_ when they’re in the moment, then after they’re usually just sleeping (no matter what time of day or night it is, really), and then hours later once it’s all said and done it seems silly to bring up. And so it goes. They have an understanding, this unspoken thing where they talk about everything, seemingly, except _that_ . And if it feels against the “rules” for him to kiss her forehead at the door when she leaves or meet her and Max in the dining hall a mere two hours later, she doesn’t pay it any mind (she already learned that some of her “rules” have been a bit stupid, remember?). Their _thing_ just feels like it exists in a snowglobe, or something—cozy and safe in their bubble and she doesn’t want the outside world and its expectations to ruin it in that familiar way it always seems to.

She’s sitting in their dorm one afternoon when Max comes in, somehow both _floating_ and barrelling at the same damn time.

“Well hello there, beef Ellington,” she smirks, tossing her messenger bag on the floor and flopping onto the bed across from El’s, running her hands over the duvet.

El rolls her eyes, barely sparing Max a glance before her eyes are once again glued to her romance novel (she stopped trying to hide them after Max caught her pretending to scan a textbook, but actually propping up her copy of _Keep My Heart Forever_ inside and she realized just reading them outright would be far easier than _that_ feeling of humiliation again).

“ _Somebody’s_ in a good mood. Lemme guess—you’re back from _Lucas’_ place?”

“Sure am, Elliebean,” Max winks while El marvels at just how many nicknames she can conjure up in the course of one conversation. “I’m exhausted, though. Didn’t get much sleeping done, if you catch my drift.”

“Uh, I think you could blindfold me and butter my hands and I’d _still_ catch that, Maxie,” El grimaces.

“Oh, don’t act all prudish,” Max laughs. “I’m surprised I didn’t come back to Mike in here. Unless he’s hiding under the bed or something. Where are you hiding him, El?”

“Shut _up_ ,” El laughs, exasperated. “It’s not like we’re glued to each other, or anything. It’s literally the same situation that you have with Lucas.”

“Ha!” Max scoffs in a way that makes El’s brows furrow involuntarily. “Good one. It is _not_ literally the same. And you know why?”

El just narrows her eyes at her, knowing she’s about to continue anyway.

“Because,” Max makes a dramatic show of clearing her throat. “Lucas and I are very open with the fact that we like each other. We sleep together, we go out together, _exclusively_ , and we verbally acknowledge it. _Meanwhile…”_

El sighs. “Spit it out, Maxine.”

“I’m just saying—I straight up _told_ Lucas when I thought I could be falling for him. And you know I don’t do feelings.”

“I don’t- _we_ don’t- I…” El splutters before shaking her head and regaining her composure, shrugging. “Guess you guys are more serious than us then. Mike and I are just friends who sleep together.”

“ _Cute_ ,” Max’s laugh is dry. “You’re so delusional.”

“Delusional?!” El cries. “How?”

“You and Mike literally look at each other like you might as well be fucking—sorry no, not fucking, _making love_ , which is way grosser— _all_ the time, and definitely in places where it is entirely inappropriate, aka usually where I’m eating. Just last Thursday you went over to his place with movies and sexual favors because he told you his dad had been on his case again about switching his major to business, which is an entirely _unsexy_ , far too serious for just ‘friends with benefits’ situation. Not to mention how many times you’ve been caught _cuddling_ far later than could just be considered ‘afterglow,’ which Lucas and I don’t even do and we’re actually _dating_. Face it, Hopper, you’re a goner.”

“It’s not like that,” El mutters, but she already knows her face is _burning_ in the most absolutely annoying way. “He’s just easy to talk to. To hang out with. I’ve never had a friend like him— _no offense_.”

Max doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, so El is just left to marinate in her own thoughts. It’s when she’s reopening her book—yeah, as if she can focus on Katharine and Stephen’s misadventures in love _now_ —that Max crosses the room, now whispering directly into El’s ear in a way that would sound like taunting if it were from anyone else besides one of her best friends.

“Maybe that’s because he’s not just a _friend_ at all.”

And before El can spit out some kind of attempt at a rebuttal, Max grabs her towel and shower caddy and is back out the door as definitively as she came in.

She’s able to put that conversation out of her mind (well, to the best of her ability, let’s be honest) and it’s not until mid-spring semester that she gets some potential table-shaking news—Phil is visiting a friend on campus and wants to see _her_. She’s not sure if she’s more annoyed or ambivalent about it. It’s not like they were in love, and it’s been a while, so it wouldn’t be painful to see him, or anything, she’s just not quite sure _why_ he wants to.

She expresses as much in Mike’s dorm one day (she also fleetingly realizes that she’s seen his roommate a total of _two_ times in the seven months she’s been randomly over and wonders if he’s, like, okay) because, yes, they’re totally capable of just hanging out without giving into the desire to be naked (which is more than she can say for Max and Lucas, quite frankly).

“My high school boyfriend wants to see me,” she just _throws it out there_ , not even looking up from the homework she’s doing.

They’ve never talked _deeply_ about him, only really with regard to El’s experience (or _in_ experience, at times) when it’s relevant to their, erm, _situation_. Mike is impossibly understanding in a way that El finds both frustrating and adorable and a whole other cocktail of emotions she doesn’t even want to tap into.

“Oh, uh...that’s _nice_?” Mike attempts, wincing, and El finally peels her eyes from her textbook, looking at him flatly. “Sorry—not sure what the vibe is here.”

“It’s dumb,” she sighs. “I’m not _opposed_ to it, I guess, I just can’t imagine what he’d have to say.”

“People can surprise you,” Mike shrugs, trying to look nonchalant, but his eyes are also _burning_ through her and she has to bury her face back in her textbook before she self-destructs.

Mike is noticeably quiet the rest of the afternoon, but El doesn’t say anything.

El does end up making plans with Phil for the next day, settling on a bustling coffee shop on campus rife with other people and potential exit strategies—it almost reminds her of her first date, scheming with Josie beforehand on the most convincing way to say “my goldfish is sick and I need to leave” if the night went south. He pays for her coffee, insisting that it’s just because she’s offering the courtesy of even seeing him. But she learns soon enough that that’s _not_ the case, because Phil is practically begging her to try again and telling her that he can’t stop thinking about her and that maybe, now that they’re older, they’d have a better chance despite literally being on different sides of the country. It takes her a while to pinpoint the fact that what she’s feeling is pure _annoyance_.

The whole time, El can’t help but hope that Mike is still home, because she can’t wait to tell him all about the audacity of _this boy_.

Their “coffee meeting” comes to an abrupt end when El’s claiming that she doesn’t feel well, citing the sugar content of her drink—which is bullshit, because she’s a sugar fiend and has been her whole life, let alone in high school, so Phil obviously knows—before giving him a weak kiss on the cheek and wishing him a nice life, absolutely hightailing it out of there.

She stops at a payphone, calling Krista’s dorm to unload the news to her—she “can’t believe it, that little shit,” but sends her well wishes and a reminder that she’ll be in town over her spring break and it makes El feel better, if only for a little while.

Once she’s back in her building, she bypasses her own room entirely, making a beeline to Mike’s and knocking like her life depends on it (her life doesn’t, but her sanity sure does). He opens the door, simply leaning on the frame with a single eyebrow raised before speaking.

“Back so soon?” He _almost_ sounds smug, but there’s also a tinge of nerves in his voice that’s so boyish and soft and _him_ that it warms El’s heart.

“Dude,” she groans, pushing past him to plop onto his bed, face planting into the pillow and taking a deep inhale of _eau de Mike_.

“That bad?” Mike askes and El feels the other end of the bed shift under his weight.

She readjusts, then, flipping over to sit up next to him, dangling her short legs off the edge of the mattress.

“It was just... _wild,_ ” she huffs. “I feel dumb for even thinking it would be nothing, y’know, ‘ _just two friends catching up.'_ ”

“You’re not dumb,” he shakes his head. “Sounds like he was the dumb one.”

“You’re just saying that because of your male ego,” she scoffs, bumping her shoulder against his. “I mean, it’s kind of ridiculous, no? Like, it was literally _junior year of high school_.”

“Eh,” Mike shrugs, averting his eyes in a way that makes El unsure as to whether whatever he says next will make her want to smack him. “Can’t really blame the guy.”

Her eyebrows raise on their own accord and she turns to him, but he’s still not looking. “Pardon?”

She sees his Adam’s apple bob as he gulps, and she knows him well enough to know he’s deep in thought, trying to strategize just how to say what he wants to. He does this a lot when he offers to be a second set of eyes on her Integrated Science homework and it’s _entirely wrong_ and he wants to let her down gently, but this is an entirely different conversation, so she doesn’t know what to expect. Also when did her palms start sweating?

“I mean,” he feigns a casual, dry laugh, which El ignores. “It’s basically impossible to not fall in love with you.”

Very suddenly El feels as though her world has flipped upside down because _Mike_ , her hookup buddy, or whatever, but also her genuine friend, the only person she’s ever been so _open_ with (in quite literally pretty much _every_ sense of the word) basically just said he’s _in love with her_. And if the words themselves were unclear, the absolute _conviction_ (she’s never heard him sound so sure of anything ever) in his voice and on his face—his _face!_ —do the rest of the work for him. She can’t help the gasp that escapes her throat, which he takes the wrong way, of course, his words stumbling over themselves to assure her that it’s _not a big deal_ and _it’s fine if she never wants to talk again_ and to _just_ _forget it_. But she realizes in that moment, with aggressive clarity, that her life is basically split into _before_ she met Mike and _after_ , and so much of the before just feels like random background noise (except her girls, of fucking course) that’s blending more into one homogenous, outside blob with each passing day in the after. Something about him just _fits_ , and not just in the biblical sense.

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she whispers, more to herself than him.

So she does the only thing she can think of and kisses him, molding her lips perfectly to his as if they were invented solely for this purpose and pouring all the pent up emotion (not just raw passion, something...different, deeper) into the action. And he’s kissing her back and soon enough they’re in a position that’s certainly not foreign to them, her straddling him (both still fully clothed this time, though) while she presses soft, but heated, kisses up along his jawline and his hands—absent-minded, but purposeful in the way that they’ve gotten so used to just _being there_ , on her—play around with the belt loops of her jeans.

She leans back, then, hands on the hem of her own shirt, ready to lift it over her head before he stops her, hands landing firmly on her hips (not before gently ghosting over her ticklish spot, eliciting a high-pitched giggle from her that she sees him crinkle his eyes at in matched mirth).

“Wait-” he starts, looking up at her with eyes so affectionate that they’re threatening to swallow her whole, right there. “This is different, isn’t it?”

El can’t help but laugh, but she also kind of wants to cry, because he’s so sweet and caring and holy _shit_ , she’s probably, definitely, entirely in love with him, too, which is kind of wild if she dwells on it (but she’s a little too busy to dwell on it right now).

“Yes,” she nods, eyes a bit watery for reasons she can’t quite explain, but has a feeling this will become another defining point between a _before_ and _after_.

But then the smile on Mike’s face rivals the whole entire _sun_ and they’re both just so happy and he’s diving in to kiss her again, rolling her over so she’s on her back and he’s leaning over her and she’s truly never felt so right and safe and _warm_.

 

_**END** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I kind of fucking hate this ending, idunno, the Mike parts were kinda rushed and I tortured you all with a whole other boyfriend lol, so, sorry. But they’re soulmates regardless! So focus on that. 
> 
> Also, this brings us to the—probably anticlimactic—end of this whole damn thing. I hope you enjoyed at least some of it! I had a blast and also wanted to rip all my hair out one follicle at a time. If you need me, I’ll be sleeping for 37 days straight. Reviews are always appreciated, I won’t beg because it’s not my scene, but I did write a lot, and all. 
> 
> Anyway, many thanks for reading!!! I hope you enjoyed! This is probably realistically the only ST fic I’ll ever write because it’s about 10 fics in one so soak it up, baby. Feel free to read my other stories if you have any interest in Nick/Jess (New Girl) and Chidi/Eleanor (The Good Place), though! (And pay no attention to that long-abandoned WIP, okay?...) If you want to talk to me on tumblr about this, I'm @its-all-yours-now, but I'm not a fandom blog, really, I just post what I want, so YRMV.


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